Middle East Diplomats Rack Up Air Miles Ahead of Annapolis Summit

Arab leaders will hold a mini-summit in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheik tomorrow, ahead of next week's high-stakes Middle East peace conference in the US.

In a meeting with the former prime minister, Tony Blair, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt confirmed that he would hold talks with the Jordanian and Palestinian leaders as part of a flurry of diplomatic activity before Monday's meeting in Annapolis, Maryland.

Tomorrow's meeting takes place just a day before an important Arab League summit in Cairo, when Arab countries are expected to announce whether they will attend.

Meanwhile, the Quartet of Middle East mediators will confer in Washington on Sunday, the day before the Annapolis summit, senior western diplomats said.

The high-level Quartet meeting will be led by the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice - who has led the US peace effort - the UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, the EU's foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, and the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov.

The US has invited more than 40 countries and international organizations to the peace conference as a prelude to the first Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations in seven years.

Israel and the Palestinians are expected to present a joint statement on resuming peace talks at Annapolis, yet with less than a week before their delegations arrive in the US, the so-called road map to peace exists only in a vague form.

The conference, seen as a bid for diplomatic glory on the part of George Bush after his problems in Iraq, will center on a marathon session at the US Naval Academy on Tuesday.

Bush will open the session, meet the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, and the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, and address a dinner of all participants the day before.

"This conference will be a launching point for negotiations leading to the establishment of a Palestinian state and the realization of Israeli-Palestinian peace," the White House national security council spokesman, Gordon Johndroe, said.

But aside from Olmert and Abbas, who received their invitations ahead of other countries, organizations and individuals considered important enough to attend, there were few immediate public commitments to participate at the foreign minister level.

"We're hopeful and expectant that Arab countries will participate," David Welch, assistant secretary of state for near-eastern affairs, told reporters yesterday. "This is a serious effort; it's devoted to a serious purpose."

But he declined to say whether the session would confront the issues that have proved so intractable in the past - the final borders of a Palestinian state, the status of disputed Jerusalem and the right of Palestinians and their descendants who fled Israel to return to their homeland.

Nor could he elaborate on invitations to two Arab powerbrokers - Saudi Arabia and Syria - whose participation is seen as crucial. Neither currently recognizes the state of Israel.