Special report: Palestine-Israel Relations

    RAMALLAH, Dec. 27 (Xinhua) - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will ask Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to freeze settlement activities in the West Bank, a spokesman for Abbas said Thursday.

    "The president will be very clear: the building of settlements must stop first," Nabil Abu Redina told Voice of Palestine radio hours before the Abbas-Olmert summit meeting.

    "The negotiations must be serious with a real launching and without procedures blocking them," said the spokesman.

    Abbas and Olmert have been meeting regularly since June when Hamas took over Gaza and routed pro-Abbas security forces.

    The Wednesday meeting is the first one that comes after the U.S.-host Annapolis peace conference where both sides agreed to negotiate a final solution leading to establishing an independent Palestinian statehood.

    According to Abu Redina, Abbas and Olmert will evaluate the situation one month after the U.S.-hosted conference was held.

    Following the conference, Israel announced a tender to expand a disputed settlement in east Jerusalem, provoking the Palestinian National Authority (PNA).

    Meanwhile, Hamas movement, which rules the Gaza Strip, slammed the Abbas-Olmert summit which comes "under the shadow of the ongoing Israeli attacks on the Palestinians and expanding the settlements in Jerusalem."

    "These endless meetings between the two sides are worthless and have no weigh in serving our people's national cause... instead, they harm the people's higher interests," the Islamic movement said in a statement.