Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert assured France yesterday that he sought a two-state peace accord with the Palestinians despite a plan to redeploy unilaterally in the occupied West Bank if fighting continues.

“Central to our national agenda is the need to take an important step forward in order to bring about negotiations between us and the Palestinian Authority,” Olmert said before his first meeting with French President Jacques Chirac.

But Olmert ruled out talks as long as the new Palestinian government under Hamas Islamists refuses to renounce violence, accept past accords, and recognise Israel. Hamas has so far rejected the preconditions, which are endorsed by the West.

Chirac deplored a flare-up of Israeli-Palestinian fighting and called for a peaceful Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which Israel occupied in a 1967 war. “The conflict has gone on for too long,” he said.

But he did not mention Olmert’s “realignment plan”, whereby dozens of Jewish settlements in the West Bank could be removed and others annexed to Israel behind a new fortified border. The Europeans are among patrons of a peace “road map” and in the past have opposed such Israeli unilateralism. Palestinians fear Olmert’s plan will deprive them of viable statehood in the West Bank. Israel quit Gaza last year.

Having received US President George W. Bush’s praise for the plan, Olmert has voiced hope European views could change.

“I sense a new spirit in Europe,” he told reporters after London talks earlier this week with British Prime Minister Tony Blair. “These things are not achieved through public statements, but measure by measure and over time”. Blair urged Olmert to exhaust all efforts at peace talks but acknowledged that, with Hamas sworn to the Jewish state’s destruction, go-it-alone Israeli moves may be inevitable.

Europeans also eye Iran </B>