Bush puts Olmert on spot with Mideast "treaty" call

By Adam Entous - Analysis

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - President George W. Bush set what may be an impossibly high bar for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert by saying on Thursday he believed Israel would sign a peace treaty with the Palestinians in a year.

Bush set the goal of a formal peace treaty at a news conference in the West Bank city of Ramallah with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at this side.

Bush had earlier indicated he might settle for a less ambitious deal merely setting out a statehood "vision".

Though Olmert and Abbas this week told negotiators to open talks on core issues, Palestinian officials and many diplomats believe Olmert is seeking a vaguer "framework agreement", not a formal treaty that would define borders and, possibly, divide Jerusalem -- a deal that would enrage some coalition allies.

Bush faced a balancing act on his first visit as president to Israel and the occupied West Bank, which ends on Friday.

He needed to counter widespread skepticism in the region -- especially among the Arab allies he will visit next -- about the seriousness of the negotiations he helped launch in November at Annapolis. But he did not want to weaken Olmert with hardliners in his fractious government who oppose making concessions.

Bush's statement in Ramallah -- the strongest indication so far that he is personally pushing for a comprehensive rather than another interim agreement -- was unlikely to end the debate over what he is really after in his last 12 months in office.

Bush did not spell out what such a peace treaty would entail, though he did say a two-state solution would have little meaning until borders were defined and issues like the status of Palestinian refugees, Jerusalem and security were resolved.

He later used striking language to say Israel must end its 40-year "occupation" of the West Bank and ensure Palestinians had a viable state on contiguous territory -- though he accepted it was unclear what might happen in hostile, Hamas-run Gaza.

Israel has made clear a Palestinian state will not come into being until the Palestinians rein in militants in the West Bank and Gaza.

PESSIMISM

Even if Bush starts out with a genuine push for a full agreement on final-status issues, he could end up -- due to pressure from Israel or renewed violence -- in a negotiation over a far vaguer framework agreement or little more than a face-saving document of shared principles, officials said.

Palestinian officials say that could further weaken Abbas -- though he may in the end have little choice.

"The noble idea died on the drawing board long before Bush arrived," a senior Israeli official close to the current negotiations said of reaching a comprehensive agreement.

In 2000, Israel tried to reach a "Framework Agreement on Permanent Status", or FAPS, during Bill Clinton's final year as U.S. president. The idea was to follow up nine months later with a "Comprehensive Agreement on Permanent Status", or CAPS.