Jordan's King Abdullah II held talks on Thursday with Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas two days after Israeli leaders made a clandestine visit to the kingdom, a senior Jordanian official said.
The king and Abbas, who met at the kingdom's southern Red Sea resort of Aqaba, discussed "means of pushing ahead with peace negotiations with Israel on the basis of a two-state solution," the palace said.
Israeli public radio reported on Thursday that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Ehud Barak made a secret visit to Jordan on Tuesday and met the king. The palace declined to comment on these talks.
A senior government official told AFP in Amman that the king told Olmert and Barak about "the need to stop all unilateral measures in the West Bank and in Gaza."
The king also told the Israeli leaders "not to launch military operations because such measures will prevent the achievement of peace," the official said, on condition of anonymity.
The Israeli radio report, citing a senior Israeli official, said that during Tuesday's meeting the Jordanian monarch urged the Israeli leaders to refrain from launching a large-scale military operation in the Gaza Strip.
An Israeli political source said Olmert declined to give a guarantee, saying Israel "cannot restrain itself for long" and might invade Gaza if militants continued firing rockets into Israel.
The radio said the king took the initiative to seek to avoid a confrontation that might also cause trouble in his country, home to many Palestinians.
Speaking to reporters in northern Israel, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said: "This (Jordan's appeal) is certainly taken into consideration but at the end of the day the state of Israel has one obligation and that's towards its citizens."
The King told Abbas that "achieving peace with the Palestinians will pave the way for a comprehensive regional peace," a palace statement said.
The two leaders agreed that "Palestinian-Israeli peace talks should continue and Israel should take immediate measures to end the suffering of the Palestinians," the statement added.
Israel has had full diplomatic ties with Jordan since 1994 but some high-level talks are not announced in advance, largely for security reasons. |
