Bush assures Abbas statehood "high priority"

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush, trying to shore up a faltering Middle East peace process, assured Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday that Palestinian statehood remained a high priority in his final 10 months in office.

Bush met Abbas at the White House in the face of deepening skepticism over the chances for achieving his goal of securing a peace deal with Israel before the U.S. leader leaves power.

Abbas voiced confidence in Bush's commitment to an agreement that would lead to creation of a Palestinian state but acknowledged it would not be easy after decades of bitter conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.

"I cannot say the road to peace is paved with flowers. It is paved with obstacles," Abbas said, sitting next to Bush in the Oval Office. "But together we will work very hard."

The talks with Abbas, weakened by the takeover of Gaza last year by the Islamist Hamas movement, were a prelude to Bush's trip to Israel in mid-May to celebrate the 60th anniversary of its founding. Bush also plans to meet Abbas again at the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh during that trip.

Negotiations between Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert have bogged down in the five months since a U.S.-hosted conference in Annapolis, Maryland, in November, where they pledged to try to reach a peace agreement by the end of 2008.

The administration is now picking up the pace of Middle East diplomacy again after Bush failed to achieve a breakthrough on a visit to the region in January.

Seeking to bolster Abbas against his Islamist rivals, Bush -- once wary of taking a hands-on role in peacemaking -- told him he remained committed to helping achieve a statehood deal.

"I assured the president that a Palestinian state's a high priority for me and my administration, a viable state, a state that doesn't look like Swiss cheese," Bush told reporters.

"I'm confident we can achieve the definition of a state. I'm also confident it's going to require hard work. To that end, I'm going back to the Middle East."

SETTLEMENTS

While neither leader spoke publicly of Jewish settlements which Palestinians say deny them contiguous territory, Abbas wants Bush to get Israel to stop expanding its enclaves in the occupied West Bank.

Bush has criticized settlement activity before but has been reluctant to exert heavier pressure on the Jewish state, a staunch U.S. ally. Israel insists it has the right to build in major settlements it intends to keep under any final treaty.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is going to the region before Bush, who is looking to shape a foreign policy legacy that encompasses more than the unpopular war in Iraq.

But Bush will likely have a hard time squeezing serious concessions from either side as world leaders look increasingly to his successor.

Since Annapolis, the climate has soured amid disputes over settlement expansion plans in the West Bank and outbreaks of violence in and around Gaza, where Hamas cross-border rocket fire has drawn a tough Israeli military response.

Critics had accused Bush, who disdained predecessor Bill Clinton's failed peace effort at the end of his presidency, of neglecting the Middle East conflict and they say he still has not deployed Washington's full diplomatic weight.

The White House invitation was intended to boost Abbas, a pro-Western moderate who governs only in the West Bank since Hamas, a militant group that advocates Israel's destruction, seized control of Gaza by force. "Time is of the essence," Abbas said, insisting the two sides must not "waste time."

Aides said Abbas, pushing for a framework agreement with timetables for statehood, is concerned any momentum toward a deal would be lost at the start of a new U.S. administration.

Olmert, also politically weak at home, is looking for a vaguer list of "understandings" with the Palestinians.

(Writing by Matt Spetalnick; Editing by David Storey)