Officials lower expectations ahead of Suleiman visit
PM does not request meeting with Bush, Rice during their scheduled visit to Jordan, prefers to wait for Abbas to contain terror elements in PA, uphold ceasefire; officials say no breakthrough on Shalit release expected during visit by Egypt intelligence chief
“There is no point in such a meeting at this juncture,” an official said.
On the heels of his dramatic speech in Sde Boker, Olmert prefers to wait for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to contain the terror elements in the Authority and uphold the ceasefire. Furthermore, he expects Abbas to succeed in establishing a government comprised of technocrats that would accept the Quartet’s conditions and the Road Map guidelines.
Bush, for his part, will be arriving in Jordan, from Riga, Latvia, where he participated in a NATO summit that centered on the continued activity in Afghanistan and the Iraq issue.
Bush's visit to Jordan is not intended to deal directly with negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, but rather on Iraq, this due to internal pressures from the Senate and House, both controlled by the Democrats.
In a week in which more than 300 people were killed in Iraq, the Bush Administration is urging Abbas and Olmert to move forward with the diplomatic process on their own.
Apart from an expected meeting between Rice and Abbas in Jericho, the secretary of state and Bush do not plan on getting personally involved in the process until the formation of a Palestinian unity government and the clarification of the agreements between Israel and the PA.
No new policies
Egyptian Intelligence Head Omar Suleiman would arrive Wednesday in Jerusalem for a row of meetings with Israel’s elite.
Suleiman was to meet with Defense Minister Amir Peretz Wednesday morning, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert Wednesday afternoon, and National Infrastructure Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer Wednesday evening.
He was also expected to meet with Mossad Head Meir Dagan at some point in the day.
Suleiman, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s mediator of the indirect negotiations between Hamas and Israel regarding the issue of the prisoners and kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit, was coming to fill the empty space left by the US.
Suleiman was not expected to bring any new policies to the table. He would likely speak of strengthening the ceasefire with the Palestinians and of increasing Cairo’s involvement in preventing the smuggling of weapons from Sinai into the Gaza Strip.
His upcoming visit to Israel would serve as reinforcement to the process which began to formulate with Sunday’s notice of a ceasefire and would end with the establishment of a technocratic government that would acknowledge Israel and renounce terror.
Olmert’s aides in Jerusalem did not expect big news concerning the release of kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit. Hamas’ demands – the release of hundreds of prisoners – were known.
Suleiman recently met with Hamas politburo Chief Khaled Mashaal, but did not come to close a deal. He would update the prime minister and the defense minister, but would offer nothing more.
Sources in Jerusalem said, “The release agreement, if it were to be executed, would come as a trust building step following the establishment of a new Palestinian unity government.”
