OlMert

JERUSALEM (Reuters):

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said in a newspaper interview published yesterday that failure to negotiate a two-state solution with the Palestinians could threaten Israel's long-term survival.

"If the day comes when the two-state solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights (with Palestinians) ... then, as soon as that happens, the State of Israel is finished," Olmert told the Haaretz daily.

The interview was published the day after Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas met U.S. President George W. Bush in Washington to resume the first formal peace talks in seven years.

That followed Tuesday's peace conference in Annapolis, Mary-land, which ended with a pledge to try to forge a peace treaty between Israel and the Palestinians by the end of 2008. Israel is worried Palestinians could eventually outnumber Jews if it keeps control of all the territory it captured in the 1967 Middle East war.

Olmert said that if Israel failed to agree to a two-state solution and tried to absorb Palestinians into a Jewish state without giving them equal voting rights, influential U.S. Jewish organisations "will be the first to come out against us".

"They will say they cannot support a state that does not support democracy and equal voting rights for all its residents," he said.

Olmert said that four years ago, when deputy to former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, he had already stated Israel should withdraw from most of the land captured in 1967.