Israeli-Palestinian deal "doable" in 9 months: EU

By Adam Entous

JERICHO, West Bank (Reuters) - The EU's top diplomat said on Tuesday an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal was "doable" within nine months and that the issue of the Golan Heights should be addressed by a planned peace conference this month.

Syria has made its attendance conditional on the conference agenda including the Golan Heights, captured from it by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war. The talks on Palestinian statehood are slated for the last week of November in Annapolis, Maryland.

U.S. President George W. Bush called for the conference to bolster Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and the long-stalled peace process after Hamas Islamists seized the Gaza Strip in June, and Israel has resisted adding Golan to the agenda.

The conference may also be a chance for the Bush administration to turn its legacy around from the unpopular war in Iraq.

"What we have in mind now is to finish the (Israeli-Palestinian) agreement after Annapolis in, let's say, eight, nine months -- during the period of time in which the administration, the present American administration, will stay in power," the European Union's foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, told Reuters in the West Bank town of Jericho.

"It's doable. It requires political will. It requires effort. It's not easy. But it's doable," Solana said.

It is unclear how a deal would be implemented with the Palestinian territories divided between Hamas ruling Gaza and Abbas's Fatah faction dominating the occupied West Bank. Seven people died on Monday in gunfire at a Fatah rally in Gaza.

Solana acknowledged growing tensions between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators struggling to narrow differences over a joint document to be presented at the conference.