Maryland city chosen as likely Mideast talks site

WASHINGTON - The United States has picked Annapolis, Md., as the expected site of a Mideast peace conference this fall that President Bush hopes will launch new negotiations toward establishing an independent Palestinian state.

The small city about 30 miles northeast of Washington was selected because of its closeness to the capital and the presence of the US Naval Academy, where the November conference would be based, US and other officials said yesterday.

The United States has been vague about the agenda, timing, and guest list for the meeting, but Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has said it will deal with the hardest issues in the 60-year Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Annapolis was also attractive because, unlike other sites near Washington, it has not been the site of any previous Mideast peace sessions.

US officials want to avoid both high expectations and bad memories by not returning to the Camp David presidential retreat, site of both a historic US-brokered peace breakthrough and a failure.

Bush announced in July that the United States would host an international gathering dedicated to jump-starting Israeli-Palestinian talks. The Bush administration wants Arab power brokers, notably Saudi Arabia, to attend and lend backbone to the efforts to set up an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel.

Rice, who will host the meeting, said no invitations have been issued. Bush may attend part of the session, which is to bring together Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

Abbas and Olmert have been meeting to work out proposals for the conference, set tentatively for November.

The militant Palestinian Hamas group has called on Saudi Arabia and other nations not to attend, and warned Arab countries against offering concessions to Israel.

A harbor town that bills itself as "America's Sailing Capital," Annapolis was the nation's capital for several months in the 1780s. The highlight of Annapolis' brief tenure as the capital came in 1784, when the Continental Congress ratified the Treaty of Paris, formally ending the Revolutionary War.

At the United Nations yesterday, Abbas said the Palestinian Authority is fully committed to holding the peace talks.

"Today there is not the slightest obstacle to promoting the holding of a peace meeting, which will take place shortly," Abbas said in a speech to the General Assembly.

"We are very committed to the substance of that meeting, as proposed," Abbas said. "We would hope all parties would sit down to negotiation."

While no invitations have been issued yet, US officials have indicated that the meeting would include Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar.

Arab states have yet to state whether they would attend.

After his speech, Abbas said he believed the conference could pave the way for a subsequent peace agreement, Reuters reported. "I think that it could be reached, yes," he said.

Abbas said any agreement would be put to a referendum "involving the entire Palestinian people."