Jordans King Set To Meet Olmert

PETRA, Jordan - In an effort to sell a sweeping Israeli-Palestinian peace initiative, Jordan's King Abdullah II plans to host Israel's embattled Prime Minister Ehud Olmert Tuesday in a rare high-level meeting.

Jordan, along with Egypt, were the first Arab countries to make peace with Israel and are charged with promoting the Arab-initiated peace deal to the Jewish State, which has welcomed it as a good starting point but objects to several key provisions.

Olmert is set to arrive Tuesday morning in this ancient city, where a conference involving Nobel Laureates and Israeli and Arab youth on ways to solve conflicts in the volatile Mideast will open.

Olmert's spokeswoman, Miri Eisin, said the two leaders planned to break away from the conference and travel to the king's palace in the southern Jordanian resort of Aqaba for their talks. She said they had decided on the location to give them extra privacy. Palace officials could not confirm the plan.

Jordanian government spokesman Nasser Judeh said earlier Monday that Abdullah regarded the Arab peace initiative as "a historic chance" and would focus his talks with Olmert on the plan.

The talks will "deal with the issues that are pertinent these days â€" reinvigorating the peace process and reaffirming of the viability of the Arab peace initiative," Judeh said.

A coalition of 13 Jordanian associations, dominated by hard-line Muslim and leftist groups, meanwhile, announced plans to demonstrate on Tuesday to "protest against the visit of criminal Olmert to Petra."

The Arab peace plan offers Israel full recognition in exchange for a full withdrawal from lands it captured in the 1967 Mideast war and the creation of a Palestinian state. Israel has welcomed the plan as a good starting point for negotiations but has objected to several key provisions.

The Arab peace plan in 2002 and renewed in March at a meeting of the Arab League in Saudi Arabia. Arab leaders have urged Israel to seize the new opportunity.

While saying it has "positive" elements, Israel has objected to major provisions of the plan, including the call to evacuate all captured lands and to repatriate millions of Palestinian refugees and their descendants. Israel says such a large influx of Palestinians would destroy Israel's character as a Jewish state.

Israeli-Palestinian talks collapsed in 2000 after the outbreak of the Palestinian uprising against Israel. Subsequent efforts to restart peace talks, including the 2003 U.S.-backed "road map" peace plan and a recent U.S. push to bring the sides back to the negotiating table, have made little progress.

David Baker, an official in Olmert's office, said the prime minister was ready to listen. "The prime minister will be discussing with the king of Jordan regional issues, Israel's situation with the Palestinians as well as the Saudi initiative," Baker said.

Progress on Arab-Israeli peace could be a welcome boost for Olmert who has been under increasing criticism back home after a scathing government commission report on his performance during Israel's summer war with Lebanon's Hezbollah guerrilla. There have been widespread calls for him to resign.

The conference in Petra, a city carved into rose-red stone and built by the Nabataean culture some 2,000 years ago, is hosted jointly by the King Abdullah II Fund for Development and the New York-based Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity.

Four Israeli schoolchildren hand picked by their government will join Palestinian students and youth from Kuwait, Morocco, Jordan and Egypt. No details were provided about the youth.

Some 40 Nobel Laureates, including former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, Israeli Vice Premier Shimon Peres and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, also were scheduled to attend and are expected to focus their discussions on the fate of Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking.