Bush wants to know Israeli leader's real plans

Sat May 20, 12:54 PM ET

WASHINGTON (AFP) - President George W. Bush, who will meet with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert at the White House, would like to hear about the Israeli leader's real plans with regard to Israel's new borders.

"What the president really wants to know here is what is Prime Minister Olmert thinking," said a senior administration official, who spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity.

"The main purpose of this visit is for the two leaders to get to know and understand each other better," the official added.

The two men met only once before -- in 1998 when Bush, then governor of Texas, visited Jerusalem where Olmert was mayor.

On Tuesday, the Israeli prime minister will be received at the White House where he will hold talks with Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other top officials of the US administration.

On Wednesday, he will address a joint session of Congress, a honor reserved to the closest allies of Washington, and will hold talks at the Pentagon.

But despite a warm welcome that is evidently being prepared for Olmert, the US administration remains cautious toward his plan for Israel's partial and unilateral withdrawal from the West Bank, believing that it calls into question the "roadmap for peace," an international plan for the Middle East that Washington continues to support.

As she met Thursday with Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal, Secretary of State Rice reminded that the United States favored a negotiated solution of the Middle East conflict.

Saudi Arabia and the United States "also expressed their opposition to any unilateral steps taken by either side in the dispute that may prejudice final status negotiations or undermine progress toward a two-state solution," said a joint communique released by the State Department.

Designed by an international "quartet" that includes the United States, Russia, the United Nations and European Union, the "roadmap" called for creating a Palestinian state in 2005, an end to violence, disarmament of Palestinian militants and a freeze on new Israeli settlements.

But so far, the plan remains a dead letter.

Olmert's plan for a unilateral withdrawal from the West Bank is raising a lot of questions in Washington, the US official said.

The official mentioned among them security on the border with Jordan as well as on religious sites located outside a protective barrier that Israel plans to build on Palestinian territories, and the legal status of that barrier.

"There are certainly a dozen and probably two dozen serious questions like that that they're going to have to answer for themselves and have not yet answered," the official pointed out.

Washington is also expected to ask Olmert to lend Israel's support for an international financial mechanism that the European Union is trying to put together in order to channel aid to the Palestinians without making it available to the Hamas-led government of the Palestinian Authority.

The United States and the European Union consider Hamas a terrorist organizations.

Scott Lasensky, a Middle East expert at the United States Institute of Peace, said the Israeli government should take part in this foundation and make available to it some of the Palestinian taxes it froze following the Hamas election victory.

"Israel does not want chaos on the other side of the fence," Lasensky said.

According to the US official, Olmert was also expected to raise with Bush the issue of Iran, especially plans by France, Germany and Britain to offer Tehran a package consisting of a mix of deterrents and enticements designed to persuade it to abandon its nuclear program.

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