Gap between sides grows bigger as date for peace talks gets closer

Occupied Jerusalem: After prodding the Israelis and Palestinians back to the negotiating table for the first time in nearly seven years, the Bush administration now confronts a stalemate that threatens to undermine the latest peace initiative.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian National Authority President Mahmoud Abbas put negotiators to work last week with instructions to make progress in advance of a US-sponsored peace conference tentatively set for November.

Yet the talks have reached an impasse, aides said, prompting the two leaders to look to US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to salvage the effort during a six-day visit to the region starting this weekend.

The administration's effort is hobbled by stark differences between two sides with weak leaders who face hawkish opposition at home and cannot even agree on what kind of joint document to strive for as a basis for the conference.

"It's hard to imagine that we're a month before the conference and the parties still don't have a common concept of what they're after," said David Makovsky, senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "If you don't know where you want to go, no car can get you there."

With Arab expectations high, some are predicting that an inconclusive outcome at the peace conference would set off a new round of Israeli-Palestinian blood- letting. But analysts in the region say the gap appears to be unbridgeable.

Abbas has demanded that the two sides go to the conference with a framework agreement for creation of a Palestinian state, a deadline of roughly one year for negotiating the details and an international body to oversee the project.

Olmert is reluctant to make concessions. Aides say he favours a short, vague "declaration of interests" to emerge from the current discussions and seeks to leave any future negotiations open-ended.