Bush welcomes Sharon to the Royal Palace in Aqaba.

AQABA, Jordan, June 4 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – U.S. President George W. Bush met here Wednesday, June 4, with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian counterpart Mahmud Abbas ahead of a crucial Middle East peace summit.

Bush had separate meetings with the summit host King Abdullah II, followed by Sharon and Abbas before the three-way summit got down to business at the king's summer residence of Beit al-Bahr (home of the sea), overlooking the Gulf of Aqaba.

The summit is focusing on the implementation of the roadmap plan for peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Separate statements were to be issued afterwards after the Israelis and Palestinians failed to agree on a joint communiqué.

Ceasefire "important"

A ceasefire between Israel and the Palestinians would be an "important" and "helpful" step towards peace, the United States said ahead of the landmark summit.

Israel has warned that a ceasefire at the stage in the 32-month old Palestinian Intifada against the occupation would be dangerous, and permit Palestinian resistance factions to regroup.

But White House spokesman Ari Fleischer backed the idea.

"Clearly a ceasefire is helpful and important. It also must be part of a crackdown and a dismantling," he told reporters on Air Force One as Bush traveled from Egypt to Jordan.

Fleischer did not mention any timeframe under which the United States would like to see a ceasefire introduced or say whether Washington had pushed for one to be agreed at Wednesday's summit.

He poured praise on Abbas, with whom Bush has decided to deal in preference to Palestinian President Yasser Arafat.

"The big change in the last year is that the Palestinian people are now led by a man who is interested in achieving peace, genuine, real, peace, and cracking down on terror," Fleischer said.

"The Palestinian leader knows he has the backing of his powerful Arab neighbors to help achieve peace and crackdown on terror," he noted.

The U.S.-Arab summit hosted by Egypt Tuesday, June 3, with the aim of re-launching the Middle East peace process closed its formal session with differences emerging to the fore.

The two sides locked horn over Arabs’ normalization of ties with the Jewish state which delayed the official opening of the summit.

However, the summit ended with a joint agreement on the establishment of a Palestinian state and combating "terrorism" in the region.

Close

Palestinian factions "now feel the need to calm things" and a ceasefire agreement with them was "maybe close," Abbas said

Abbas told Egyptian television before traveling to Aqba that Palestinian factions "now feel the need to calm things" and that a ceasefire agreement with them was "maybe close."

In the interview conducted in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, Abbas said: "So I say that we are on the path of a solution, perhaps soon."

Egypt has since November hosted several rounds of inter-Palestinian talks in a bid to stop attacks against Israelis, with Hamas and Islamic Jihad rejecting a truce unless Israel withdraws from the occupied Palestinian territories and stop assassinating Palestinian activists.

A Hamas spokesman in Gaza, Ismail Abu Shanab, told the U.S. television network ABC News that his organization would stop attacks against Israel during peace negotiations if Israel withdrew from the Palestinian territories.

"We are ready to offer it any time if there is a guarantee that those preliminary steps will be taken as part of a wide scale withdrawal, and not the final steps," he said.

Abu Shanab urged Washington, which is "the only power that can pressure Israel to withdraw," to "guarantee all these things, an Israeli withdrawal, even if it is step by step."

He said the release of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails was a "very, very sensitive issue for the Palestinians," as was the creation of an independent Palestinian state and the dismantling of Israeli settlements on Palestinian land.

Pressed to clarify if Hamas would put a stop to anti-Israeli attacks during the negotiating process if gradual steps were taken to meet the Palestinians' objectives, Abu Shanab said: "Definitely yes. This is my message ... we want to live in peace."

No

An Israeli official earlier ruled out the prospect of a ceasefire agreement at this stage.

"We are against a simple ceasefire because terrorist organizations would take advantage of it to rebuild their infrastructure," government spokesman Avi Pazner claimed in statements to AFP.

He argued that the priority should be the dismantling of "terrorist infrastructure" by the Palestinian Authority.

"Israel is going to the summit with a lot of good will, and hopes of a breakthrough and a revival of the peace process which has been bogged down in violence and terrorism," Pazner alleged.

"Everything depends on the Palestinians, whether they are ready to chase the terrorists, disarm them, take them to court and dismantle their infrastructure," he claimed.