Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, in an unprecedented public acknowledgment, called continued Israeli construction in West Bank settlements a breach of Israel's obligations under a recently revived peace plan.
The remarks, published on Friday in the Jerusalem Post daily, came just days before US President George W. Bush is to arrive in the region to build on the momentum created at a Middle East peace conference in Annapolis, Maryland.
In a separate interview, Bush urged Israel to uphold its commitment to remove unauthorized settlement outposts in the West Bank.
"The Israeli government announced that it plans to get rid of the unauthorized outposts, and that's what we expect them to do. We expect the Israeli government to honor its commitments," Bush told the daily Yediot Ahronot in an interview published on Friday.
Israel has long maintained it has the right to continue building in existing settlements to account for "natural growth" of the existing population -- something the peace plan explicitly bans. But Olmert acknowledged that Israel was not honoring its commitments -- a significant development because it had never admitted it was violating the "road map" peace plan.
"There is a certain contradiction in this between what we're actually seeing and what we ourselves promised," Olmert said.
"Obligations are not only to be demanded of others, but they must also be honored by ourselves. So there is a certain problem here," he was quoted as saying.
The remarks build on Olmert's recent efforts to defuse friction over construction in disputed territories. Construction plans announced after the US conference have antagonized the Palestinians and disrupted fledgling peace talks, renewed after seven years of simmering violence.
Olmert said, however, that Israel believes a Bush letter to the Israeli government in 2004 "renders flexible to a degree what is written in the road map."
In that letter, Bush wrote that "existing Israeli population centers" should be taken into consideration when the final borders of a Palestinian state are drawn.
Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat welcomed Olmert's remarks. When both sides admit they are not carrying out their pledges, that "should be the way for both of us to carry out our obligations," Erekat said.
The two sides have agreed that the foundation for any accord would be the road map, backed by the US, the UN, the EU and Russia.
RSS