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Occupied Jerusalem : Palestinian officials on Monday angrily rejected Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's claim that they agreed to delay talks on the fate of occupied Jerusalem until the last phase of peace negotiations.
The disagreement emerged a day before Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas were scheduled to meet for the latest in a series of US-backed talks aimed at reaching a peace deal by the end of the year.
Also yesterday, Israel agreed to allow a rare shipment of cement into the Gaza Strip. Officials said the material would be used to build a desperately needed sewage treatment plant to replace one that collapsed last year and killed five people. Israel has blocked cement shipments to Gaza as part of a broader blockade after last June's takeover by Hamas.
While Israel is boycotting Hamas it has relaunched peace talks with Abbas, whose government rules the West Bank. However, peace talks have made little progress since they were resumed at a US-hosted conference last November.
At the conference, Olmert and Abbas pledged to resolve all the "core" issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict before US President George W. Bush leaves office next January. Those weighty issues include drawing the final borders between Israel and a future Palestinian state, resolving the fate of Palestinian refugees and sorting out conflicting claims to occupied Jerusalem.
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