Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said a peace agreement with the Palestinians is closer than ever and that he is “serious” about pursuing a settlement with Syria.
“There are obstacles and disagreements, but we were never so close to the possibility of reaching an agreement as we are now,” Olmert said Sunday at a joint news conference in Paris with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and French President Nicolas Sarkozy at a European Union-Mediterranean summit.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, in his opening remarks to the summit leaders, attributed failed attempts at cooperation between Mediterranean nations and Europe to botched Middle East peace negotiations.
“This new age should be an age of peace in the Middle East, and I would invite Abu Mazen and Olmert to pursue peace negotiations to achieve total peace and establish an independent Palestinian state,” Mubarak said, using Abbas’ popular name.
The joint heads of the summit, Sarkozy and Mubarak, stressed that Middle East peace is crucial to forging closer ties among the 27 EU member nations and poorer southern Mediterranean rim countries.
Olmert, 62, has also been conducting indirect talks with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, through Turkish mediators, and encountered the Syrian leader for the first time Sunday. Al-Assad said Syria was ready to put an embassy in Israel and forge “links and treaties” with the Jewish state once a peace accord was reached.
The Israeli leader told Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan that “he is extremely serious in his desire to move forward in peace talks on the Syrian track,” said Olmert spokesman Mark Regev.
