Olmert and Abbas to meet again, keeping a promise to Rice

JERUSALEM - Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will meet Sunday, an aide to the Israeli leader said, keeping their promise to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to hold regular talks.

Saeb Erekat, an Abbas confidant, said the Palestinians invited Olmert to meet in the West Bank town of Jericho but had not heard back.

The two men last met March 11 but pledged during a subsequent Rice visit to hold talks every two weeks.

The Palestinians want to head straight to the core issues dividing the two sides, such as the borders of a future Palestinian state, the status of disputed Jerusalem, and Palestinian refugees' demands to return to land they fled or were driven from when Israel was established in 1948.

Olmert's aides have said he would only talk to Abbas about security and humanitarian issues, and a "general political horizon." Divisive issues could be addressed once Palestinians halt their rocket fire into Israel from Gaza and release an Israeli soldier captured in June, they said.

Hopes of progress toward releasing Cpl. Gilad Shalit diminished Tuesday when Olmert's office balked at a list of Palestinian prisoners the soldier's captors want freed in exchange.

Palestinian Information Minister Mustafa Barghouti has said the list included Marwan Barghouti, who is serving five consecutive life terms in the murder of four Israelis and a Greek monk, and Ahmed Saadat, leader of a small radical faction suspected in the 2001 assassination of an Israeli cabinet minister.

In the past, Israel has hesitated to release Palestinians involved in killings, but has made exceptions. Public pressure has been building to make a deal for Shalit and two other soldiers captured three weeks later by Lebanese guerrillas in a cross-border raid that set off an inconclusive 34-day war last summer.