President George W. Bush said that the United States will "help facilitate" the Middle East peace process in a meeting with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas at the White House on Monday afternoon.

Following a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Edhud Olmert, Bush said to Abbas in the Oval Office "we want to help you. We want there to be peace. We want the people in the Palestinian territories to have hope."

He noted that the United States cannot impose Middle East peace" but can help facilitate it."

The two leaders were meeting before a Tuesday Middle East peace conference in Annapolis, Maryland, that would be attended by more than 50 countries and organizations including some 16 Arab nations.

Abbas said that he expected the conference could "produce permanent status negotiations, expanded negotiations, overall permanent status issues that would lead to a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinian people."

The Annapolis conference is seen as a new round of U.S. efforts to resume Israeli-Palestinian peace talks seven years after the last one with the aim at the creation of a Palestinian state by January, 2009 when Bush's second term ends.

As a series of diplomatic warm-up for the conference kicked off on Monday, Bush received Olmert at the White House and State Secretary Condoleezza Rice's is also expected to meet with Palestinian and Israeli chief negotiators.

U.S. Secretary of State spokesman Sean McCormack expressed his optimism towards the conference by saying "we will get to Annapolis in a good shape to accomplish all of the objectives that we, as well as the other participants, have laid out for the conference."

On a Palestinian-Israeli joint document that is set to be released later Monday, McCormack described it as "a work plan" for future negotiations between Israel and Palestine, but he refused to disclose any details.

"It is something that will document their understandings of how to move forward what this process looks like going forward," he said, adding that the document, however, may not win approval from other conference participants.

McCormack also noted the important role of the international community, "not only the U.S.," in the Middle East peace process.

"This is going to require a global effort to help the parties get to the point where they are able to make hard decisions that will result in a two state solution. But we are going to play an important role moving forward." 

(Xinhua News Agency November 27, 2007)