Diplomatic official: Recommendation of indictment may have led to cancellation of Olmert's Russia trip.
By HERB KEINONOlmert worried 248.88(photo credit: AP)
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who was expected to travel to Russia this month to discuss the crisis in the Caucasus and lobby against Russian arms sales to Syria, has cancelled his trip, diplomatic officials said Monday.
While the Prime Minister's Office never officially confirmed that the trip would take place, it had been tentatively scheduled for September 14.
Officials in the Prime Minister's Office said the trip was postponed for "logistical reasons," because no agreeable date was available to both sides.
Diplomatic officials, however, said the trip was not postponed but rather cancelled on Sunday, apparently because of the police recommendation to indict Olmert.
Olmert's hastily organized trip led to the postponement of a trip opposition head Binyamin Netanyahu had planned to take to Russia on September 11.
Netanyahu, who had planned his trip some three months ago, cancelled when it appeared it would take place right around the same time Olmert was there.
Sources close to Netanyahu said he would expect the "same consideration from the opposition leader when he returns to the Prime Minister's Office."
In light of Olmert's cancellation, diplomatic officials also wondered aloud Monday whether the fifth round of indirect Israeli-Syrian talks, scheduled for Turkey on September 18-19, would indeed take place.
"I wouldn't be surprised if those talks are also postponed," one official said, saying that it was quite possible that Syrian President Bashar Assad, aware of the tenuous political situation in Israel, would put everything on hold for now, waiting for a new US Administration.
The official said that Assad already felt he had gained what he wanted from the indirect, Turkish-mediated talks with Israel - namely, an end to his international isolation, something symbolized by French President Nicolas Sarkozy's trip to Damascus last week, and the ensuing "summit" there that included Assad, Sarkozy, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Qatari emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani.
Assad himself said last Thursday that the talks would be postponed, only to be contradicted later that day by Erdogan - who Israeli officials said needs the Turkish involvement in the talks to prove to his countrymen that despite the recent constitutional crisis in Ankara, he is still an important figure on the world stage.
Meanwhile, diplomatic officials said that Israel has not publicly made clear whether it would welcome intensive US involvement in the talks, something Assad said was a condition to moving to direct talks with Israel.
While the US unequivocally denied reports over the weekend that it would send an envoy to the next round of Israeli-Syrian indirect talks, an official in the Prime Minister's Office would only say that Israel had "no public comment" on the matter.
One diplomatic official said that it was clear to all that there would be no serious negotiations with the Syrians without intensive US involvement, and that Israel's position on the matter was a good indication of how seriously Israel viewed the talks.
According to one school of thought, US involvement in the talks now - something the US Administration has not given any indication that it was interested in - would tie Olmert's successor into the talks, because it would be much more difficult for whoever follows Olmert to back away from the talks once Washington had heavily invested in them.
Gil Hoffman contributed to this report.
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