Arab summit could catalyze Saudi: Israel contact

By Andrew Hammond

RIYADH (Reuters) - This week's Arab summit in Riyadh raises the prospect of eventual Saudi-Israel peace talks but the country that houses Islam's holiest sites must tread carefully in contacts with the Jewish state, analysts said.

Arab officials at the summit, which ended on Thursday, said Saudi Arabia agreed to head a committee of Arab states which will be charged with promoting an Arab land-for-peace initiative for ending the chronic Arab-Israeli conflict.

The mechanism could pave the way for Arab states with no ties to Israel to open up their own official diplomatic channels -- a long-time goal of U.S. administrations.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas told Arab leaders in the closing session that the committee should contact "concerned parties" over peace, in an allusion to countries including Israel. He also mentioned an international peace conference.

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal refused to be drawn on the proposals for selling the Arab peace initiative at a news conference after the summit but Arab League chief Amr Moussa said there would be no "normalization for free".

Diplomats and analysts said Saudi Arabia would have to tread carefully before giving any ground on talking to Israel, which Arab states want to return territories seized in the 1967 Middle East war to Syria, Lebanon and Palestinians, who want a state.

"There's a certain tension between on the one hand saying 'we'll never talk to them (Israel)', and on the other the Arab initiative says 'we'll normalize eventually'," a Western diplomat said.

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