http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/727825.htm
Peres: Israel and Palestinians closer than ever to peace deal
By The Associated Press
Vice Premier Shimon Peres said Saturday that Israel and the Palestinians were closer to peace than they've been in the past 50 years.
"The distance between us is the shortest it's been for the last 50 years," Peres said at one-day security summit in the Central Asian nation of Kazakhstan. "The distance is very short, but the speed is very slow."
Peres said rather than focusing on political stumbling blocks to peace, they should turn their attention to economic issues, which might be easier to solve and could lead to political solutions.
"Perhaps instead of solving the political border issue, why not try to construct the relationship on the basis of economic relations," he said. "Maybe we can come to an economic peace before we come to a political peace. Then maybe political peace will come later."
On Friday, Peres said that Israel will soon hold talks with Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.
"In a very short while, we shall start to talk with him," Peres said in an interview with foreign media in Kazakhstan.
Peres said Abbas was a viable negotiating partner who was legitimately elected by his people. He said Palestinians must choose between the path of compromise that politics offers and the "uncompromising" road of religion.
Abbas is locked in a power struggle with Hamas, which defeated his Fatah party in legislative elections in January. The dispute has triggered factional fighting. Hamas, whose charter calls for Israel's destruction, has refused to cave in to calls by Western donor nations to renounce violence and recognize Israel, despite growing hardship.
Abbas has pressured Hamas to accept a proposal that implicitly recognizes
Israel. Abbas has endorsed the plan as a way to restart peace talks and lift the crippling international sanctions that have rendered the government unable to pay salaries that sustain one-third of the Palestinian population.
"Foreign support won't come to a party which opposes peace, which doesn't
recognize Israel," Peres said on the eve of an international conference of heads of state and other leaders in Kazakhstan. Participants are expected to discuss security and other issues of mutual concern. A delegation from the Palestinian Authority is attending.
Visiting France this week, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Israel would set its borders with the Palestinians unilaterally if peace talks stay stalled.
"The plan is inevitable, it will be implemented, hopefully by agreement, but it will be implemented," he told reporters after meeting French President Jacques Chirac.
Olmert also insisted that he would never cede Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem's Temple Mount, revered as a holy site by Jews and Muslims. Olmert's aides have said previously that his withdrawal plan would include some mainly Arab areas of East Jerusalem.
Peres: Iran will cooperate on nuclear talks
Peres said Friday he believes Iran will eventually cooperate in nuclear negotiations with an emerging coalition of nations that is trying to get Iran to abandon its suspected development of nuclear weapons.
Peres also said Iran will suffer deepening poverty and isolation if it spurns international appeals for it to halt its nuclear activity.
Noting that Iran's population had more than doubled in the past 15 years, and that unemployment and drug addiction were worsening as the country devotes huge resources to military development, Peres said he doesn't think the Iranians "have much of a choice."
"Their choice is to keep the country poor and their arsenal rich. It cannot go on forever," he said. "The speeches are very impressive, but the reality is very depressive."
Peres' comments ahead of an international conference in Kazakhstan came as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in Shanghai that a six-nation incentive package aimed at getting his country to halt uranium enrichment was a step forward in resolving the dispute.
"Generally speaking, we're regarding this offer as a step forward and I have instructed my colleagues to carefully consider it," Ahmadinejad said Friday after meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao.
Ahmadinejad's remark was the highest-level sign that Iran was preparing to negotiate over the package of incentives backed by the United States, three European countries, Russia and China. The proposal called for negotiations, with the U.S. to take part, and other incentives on the condition that Iran freeze its uranium enrichment program.
A nuclear-armed Iran, Peres warned, would pose a grave threat to efforts
to prevent other countries as well as terrorists from trying to acquire
nuclear weapons.
"If Iran will have a nuclear bomb, there will be many other countries that follow suit," Peres said. He declined to say whether Israel would favor military action if international talks with Iran fail.
"Iran is a world problem. We don't want to make it into an Israeli problem," he said. "Let others decide."
Iran denies accusations by the U.S. and others that it is seeking to develop nuclear weapons, saying its program would only generate energy.
Peres planned to attend a summit in Almaty on Saturday of heads of state and other leaders. The group of about two dozen countries and international organizations is called the Conference on Interactions and
Confidence-Building Measures in Asia. It last met in 2002.
Iran was expected to send a high-ranking official from its Foreign Ministry to the meeting, but Peres indicated that a meeting was unlikely.
"For the time being, they want to destroy rather than negotiate," he said in a reference to the Iranian president's call for Israel to be wiped off the map.