Ap, herb keinon and jpost.com staff
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert returned Wednesday afternoon from an unannounced trip to Jordan, where he met King Abdullah II.
A palace statement said Olmert's closed-door talks at an Amman hilltop palace with Jordan's ruler come as part of the king's efforts to Push forward peace negotiations between the Palestinians and the Israelis.
Abdullah urged Olmert to work on "improving the living conditions of Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip," the statement said.
It said the king told Olmert that his negotiations with the Palestinians must "lead to an agreement between both sides before the end of the year, according to the two-state solution" and "pledges by all sides at the Annapolis meeting," in reference to the Annapolis Conference in Maryland, last November.
The palace statement quoted the king as saying a Palestinian-Israeli peace agreement must "deal with all outstanding final status issues and the end result would be the establishment of an independent Palestinian state."
The statement also said that Olmert briefed Abdullah on his talks with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and praised the king's efforts to "ensure progress" to "help achieve peace between Palestinians and Israelis."
Al Jazeera reported that Abdullah invited the prime minister to discuss his concerns over the possibility that accelerated talks with the Syrian's would leave the Palestinian negotiation track in the lurch.
Last week, Abdullah held talks with US President George W. Bush in the White House on ways to push the peace process forward.
In January, shortly before Bush's visit to Israel, Olmert and Abdullah met in the king's Aqaba palace. The secrecy of that meeting was then attributed to fears to Olmert's security.
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