Peres, at a news conference between meetings with Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites) and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites), repeated his long-standing belief that the Palestinians want peace with Israel and should be encouraged with territorial concessions on Israel's part.
In fact, he said "good news" was emerging all over the world, with Libya pledging to end its nuclear weapons program and Cyprus on a path to settle the island nation's 30-year division.
Peres said he was cheered by the proposals of his longtime political foe, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (news - web sites), to withdraw from Gaza and from part of the West Bank without any reciprocal moves by Palestinian leaders. Palestinians are leery of the unilateral Israeli actions, and also believe that a security barrier Israel is building could become a land grab by Israel of Palestinian territory.
The pullback by Israel cannot stop at Sharon's proposals, Peres said. "Before long it will become a plan" for a deeper withdrawal from land Israel has occupied since a 1967 war, he said.
Peres was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994 jointly with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat (news - web sites) and then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (news - web sites) for the Oslo accords that gave the Palestinians wider control of their lives and of parts of the West Bank and Gaza.
Six years later, the accord crumbled amid violence, and Peres became a focus of criticism. Over 80, Peres continues to push for far-reaching Israeli concessions as a pathway to a Palestinian state that he and President Bush (news - web sites) say can live in peace with Israel.
Even with peacemaking virtually nonexistent now, Peres said there is "a new reality in the Middle East and Sharon has to face it like everyone else."
"We shouldn't be blind," he said of Israelis who remain skeptical of Israel giving up land and the Palestinians setting up a state on it.
Most Palestinians want to live in peace with Israel, he said. But Palestinian leaders must decide "which camp they want to live in," the one of terror or the one of counter-terror, which the former prime minister said is how the world now is divided.
Three U.S. officials met with Israeli and Palestinian leaders last week in the Middle East and reported Friday to Powell and Saturday to Bush on their findings.
The White House and State Department gave no public account of the talks or what the officials found in the region.
