US President George W. Bush will host Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Monday, likely their final talks weeks before both leaders leave office without achieving a Middle East peace deal.
The talks, billed in Washington as a stock-taking with no major announcement expected, are also due to focus on Iran's suspect nuclear program, as well as relations with Syria, and the global economic crisis, US officials said.
The meeting is likely to be their last face-to-face exchange before Bush, who had once hoped to seal an Israeli-Palestinian deal in 2008, hands president-elect Barack Obama the keys to the White House on January 20.
After three years of working with Bush to solve the six-decade old conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, Olmert resigned September 21 amid corruption charges and will helm a caretaker government until February 10 elections.
The two leaders will discuss the state of Middle East peace efforts almost exactly one year after a US conference in Annapolis, Maryland, restarted stalled talks with an eye on a peace deal by late 2008, the White House said.
They will focus on "the strong bilateral relationship between our two countries, the continuing efforts to bring peace to the Middle East and a wide range of regional and international issues," said Bush spokeswoman Dana Perino.
Asked whether Iran and Syria were also on the menu, US National Security spokesman Gordon Johndroe replied: "They always talk about regional security issues."
A senior US official, who requested anonymity, described the meeting as chiefly a stock-taking effort from which no major announcement should be expected.
Olmert will meet Monday with US Vice President Dick Cheney, a Cheney spokeswoman said, and was expected to see other top US officials and perhaps aides to the US president-elect. The Israeli embassy declined comment.
Olmert's successor at the helm of the governing Kadima party, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, failed to form a governing coalition.
The Bush administration blamed Israeli political turmoil earlier this month as it all but ruled out a peace deal in 2008 to pave the way for an independent Palestinian state living side-by-side at peace with Israel.
But even before that, revived peace efforts had yet to resolve any major core disputes, and progress seemed difficult in the face of the Palestinian rift pitting president Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah against the Islamists of Hamas.
Hamas has controlled Gaza since seizing control in June 2007, while Abbas has controlled the West Bank from his headquarters in Ramallah.
Aides to Bush, the first sitting US president to call for the Palestinians to have their own independent state, say he will leave behind a solid basis for future peace efforts.
Obama telephoned Abbas on Tuesday and vowed to continue pushing forward with the negotiations, a sign "he will give the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks high priority," top Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat told AFP.
And Israeli President Shimon Peres said Tuesday he felt confident about the prospects for a Middle East peace deal next year in the wake of Obama's resounding November 4 election victory.
Observers are closely watching Obama's choices for US secretaries of state and defense for signs of how he will proceed with Middle East peace while managing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Israeli officials are also watching how Obama will take on Iran, after a campaign in which he said he might ramp up Washington's diplomatic engagement with Tehran in his first year in office.
"Obama has an opportunity to make a much greater contribution than just injecting more vigor, urgency, and activity" into the process, said Middle East expert Robert Satloff.
Satloff said Obama's "natural skills and unique international standing" might best be used "to bring about Arab acceptance of Israel as a Jewish state and an end to all state-supported incitement against Jews.
"This is the critical missing ingredient in peacemaking," he said.
