Israel said on Monday it has made “significant progress” on the issue of the future borders of a Palestinian state following a top-level meeting between the two sides. “We have made significant progress on the two issues of outlining the borders of the future Palestinian state and the security arrangements between Israel and the Palestinian state,” a senior Israeli official said. The official was speaking after a meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at whichhe was present. The two leaders met just hours after US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice wrapped up her latest visit to the region during which she pressed the two sides to advance US-brokered peace talks launched five months ago. Olmert expressed readiness to make “tangible” changes in the West Bank, telling Abbas that he understands that their months of peace talks must be accompanied by action on the ground, the official said. “Olmert and Abbas have instructed the negotiating teams to move forward on these issues,” he said, adding that “the teams were already working with maps during the talks.” “These were possibly the most serious talks the two sides have ever had,” Olmert's spokesman Mark Regev said after the third meeting between the two in less than a month. “The timetable set out in Annapolis is achievable,” he said, referring to the US-hosted conference in the Maryland city last November at which the two sides vowed to strike a full peace deal by 2009. Since then they have been deeply divided on the core issues of the decades-old conflict that have bedeviled past peace efforts, including final borders, Palestinian refugees, Jewish settlements, and the status of Jerusalem. A spokesman for Abbas on Sunday cast doubt on the ability of peace negotiators to strike a deal by the end of the year. “The gulf is still wide in the negotiations with the Israeli side,” said Nabil Abu Rudeina after a meeting between Abbas and Rice in the West Bank city of Ramallah. After the meeting Abbas said the two sides were “in a race against time” but that he still hoped to conclude an agreement by the end of the year. But a Palestinian official who asked not to be named said Jewish settlements in the West Bank were still a central sticking point in the talks, making it difficult for the two sides to agree on final borders.
