MIDDLE EAST Ehud Olmert, Israel’s prime minister, has dismissed a Palestinian peace plan referendum due to be announced on Saturday as ‘meaningless’ and said the Palestinian leadership was not presently capable of negotiating on his plan to withdraw from part of the West Bank.
In an interview with the FT ahead of visits to the UK, France and later Germany, Mr Olmert said he would seek European support for his proposals to define Israel’s borders unilaterally in the likely event that talks with Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority president, failed.
