Israel and the Palestinians opened their most ambitious peace negotiations in seven years today after President Bush urged them to reach a deal within a year.
Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said she would keep details of her talks with former Palestinian prime minister Ahmed Korei confidential but later told parliament she was prepared to make "significant territorial concessions" to further Israel's interests.
Chief negotiators Ms Livni and Mr Korei, who met in a Jerusalem hotel, opened the talks that will deal with issues such as borders and the fate of Jerusalem and Palestinian refugees.
"We started today talking about all the core issues, Jerusalem, refugees, borders, settlements. We talked about these issues in general. The talks were positive, but the path ahead is difficult," Mr Korei said after the meeting.
It took nearly seven weeks to start so-called final-status talks, announced at a US-sponsored conference in Annapolis, Maryland, underscoring the hurdles Mr Bush faces in getting a Palestinian statehood deal in his final year in office.
Today's negotiations followed Mr Bush's first presidential visit to Israel and the occupied West Bank last week, when he set the goal of signing a peace treaty in 2008.
But it is unclear how Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, both weakened politically, can get a deal in that time frame, let alone implement it.
Mr Abbas wields little power beyond the West Bank after Hamas Islamists seized control of the Gaza Strip in June. Mr Olmert is likely to face new calls to resign after an inquiry into the 2006 Lebanon war issues its final report on January 30th.
Ms Livni said before the session that talks would "take place quietly" away from the media, adding that media attention during peace talks that ended in 2001 caused negotiators to grandstand, leading to "disappointment and violence".
Israeli officials said Ms Livni and Mr Korei planned to meet at least once a week.