Arab holdout Syria agreed Sunday to attend a Mideast peace conference called by President Bush to restart talks to resolve the six-decade conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, yet expectations for the summit remained low. The two sides came to Washington without agreeing on basic terms for their negotiations.

Bush invited the Israeli and Palestinian leaders to separate meetings at the White House on Monday to prepare for the centerpiece of his Mideast gathering an all-day session Tuesday in Annapolis, Md. It is to be the only time that Bush, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas meet together, and their three-way handshake is expected to be the conference’s symbolic high point. Bush closes the U.S. effort with a second set of separate Israeli and Palestinian meetings at the White House on Wednesday.

“The broad attendance at this conference by regional states and other key international participants demonstrates the international resolve to seize this important opportunity to advance freedom and peace in the Middle East,” Bush said in a statement Sunday.

Israeli and Palestinian negotiators were meeting with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her deputy for the Mideast region, still trying to write a framework for talks that their U.S. hosts had hoped would be complete by now. Rice’s spokesman said the last-minute work is not surprising.

“We’re confident there will be a document and we’ll get to Annapolis in good shape on that,” but bargaining may well continue behind the scenes during the session Tuesday, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said in an interview.

“It will memorialize their common understandings to this point,” and look ahead to negotiations the two sides expect to begin in earnest after the session, McCormack told The Associated Press.

Separately, Palestinian negotiators Ahmed Qureia and Saeb Erekat met with Tzipi Livni, Israel’s lead negotiator, for unscheduled talks Sunday evening. Asked if they were optimistic about the prospect for reaching a consensus on a joint declaration, Qureia replied, “You don’t meet if you’re not optimistic.”

source: abc

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