Abbas downbeat on prospects for Mideast peace

By Wafa Amr

AMMAN (Reuters) - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas came away disappointed from talks in Washington on Israeli-Palestinian peace and is pessimistic about prospects for a deal this year, aides said on Sunday.

Five months after the United States hosted a Middle East peace conference in Annapolis, Maryland, negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians on the key issues of their conflict have shown no visible progress.

Abbas's talks in the U.S. capital last week with President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice appeared to do little to move the sides closer to an agreement Washington hopes to clinch before Bush leaves the White House in January.

"Upset, alarmed and disappointed," was how one Abbas aide described the Palestinian leader's mood after a meeting with Rice on Thursday.

Aides said the Palestinian delegation left Washington with the impression that Abbas would be offered less land in a U.S.-brokered deal with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert than he has been seeking for a state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

"We heard from the Americans that Israel would not accept the return of Palestinian refugees, Jerusalem would be divided, Israel wants to annex settlement blocs, and so in short, what we are being offered is much less than the 1967 borders," a senior aide said.

Israel has long held those positions, saying it would never return to lines it held before the 1967 war in which it captured the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and Arab East Jerusalem, which the Palestinians want as the capital of a future state.

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