US President George W. Bush invited Israeli and Palestinian leaders to the White House to renew long-stalled peace talks today but faced deep skepticism over chances for a deal before he leaves office.
Mr Bush was hosting Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas one day after a 44-nation conference where both pledged to try to forge a peace treaty by the end of 2008 that would create a Palestinian state.
Once wary of taking a hands-on role in Middle East diplomacy, Mr Bush was ready to ceremonially inaugurate the first formal Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations in seven years. His aim is to achieve in his final 14 months in office what has eluded US administrations for decades.
But there was no sign of Bush's commitment to the kind of sustained personal engagement he disdained after Bill Clinton failed to broker a peace accord in the twilight of his presidency.
All three leaders are politically weak at home, raising doubts whether they can make good on their promises, and lingering mistrust between Israel and Palestinians will make any progress difficult.
"There's never a perfect time in the Middle East and so we have to deal with the times that we've been dealt," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice acknowledged on NBC's 'Today Show' a day after the Middle East conference in Annapolis, Maryland.
Capping a three-day diplomatic flurry, Mr Bush first met separately with Mr Abbas today. He will then see Mr Olmert before getting both leaders together for an afternoon session to declare the peace process officially revived.
In a sign of the obstacles ahead, Hamas Islamists who control the Gaza Strip rejected the new peace drive and vowed to undermine it. Violence also flared, with Israeli missiles killing two Hamas naval officers in the southern part of the coastal territory, medical workers said.
Mr Bush, who faced criticism for not doing more sooner to resolve the conflict, had opened yesterday's conference at the US Naval Academy by reading a joint statement painstakingly negotiated by the two sides but which skirted the core issues that divide them.
Mr Bush, however, lauded Mr Olmert and Mr Abbas for agreeing to "good faith, bilateral negotiations," and Israel and the Palestinians committed themselves to send negotiating teams to a new session in Jerusalem on December 12th.