Jerusalem (AsiaNews) Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is ready to meet Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), but not until Gilad Shalit, the Israeli corporal abducted on June 25 in the Gaza Strip, is released, this according to Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres. "The two will meet to discuss the road map as soon as the crisis over the kidnapped soldier is solved," Peres told Israeli Army Radio.
For his part, Mr Abbas told the Bahraini Akhbar al-Khaleej newspaper that an agreement can be reached about exchanging prisoners. Egypt would take the soldier first, and then the number of Palestinian prisoners of war to be released would be announced.
According to the pan-Arabic al-Hayat newspaper, Egypt, which is mediating the negotiations, proposed that 300 be freed upon Shalit's transfer to Egypt; another 300 when the Israeli soldier is handed over to Israel, and another 200 by the end of the year.
For Olmert meeting Mahmoud Abbas is an important objective. "We have no more urgent problem than that of the Palestinians," he told parliament's influential Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee on Monday, a meeting participant said.
According to Olmert, who met the Palestinian president informally on June 22 (three days before Shalit's kidnapping) in Petra (Jordan) on the initiative of King Abdallah II, a formal tête-à-tête has not yet taken place because of problems within the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) due to Hamas's victory.
The official Palestinian agency Wafa reports a verbal clash between Hamas's representative in Lebanon Osama Hamdan, who accused the president of complicity in Israel' economic blockade of the Palestinians, and presidential spokesman Nabil Abu Rdaina, who rejected the charge as false and instead accused Hamdan of being irresponsible and demanded the Hamas government explain its position on the statement.
With Israel's decision to expand two Jewish settlements near Jerusalem, an Abbas-Olmert meeting seems even less likely.
The call for tender to build 700 new homes has been met by immediate Palestinian protests.