Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is en route to Washington, where he will try to advance the purchase of F-35 Stealth fighter jets. American media view his visit as being overshadowed by the criminal investigations against him.
"Anything he does now will be regarded as suspect,'' Martin Indyk, the former American ambassador to Israel, told the Bloomberg news organization. Israelis won't back a peace pact with the Palestinian Authority (PA) "because they will assume he is doing it to save himself rather than to achieve peace for Israel," he added.
Former American Middle East envoy Dennis Ross, who was active in forming the Oslo Agreements, also doubted the ability of the Prime Minister to satisfy American President George W. Bush's demand that Israel and the PA reach an agreement this year on final borders for a new Arab state within Israel's current borders. A "parameters agreement,'' in which Olmert and Abbas defining issues on which they agree upon while leaving the rest for future talks, is the best that can be expected, Ross told Bloomberg.