Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas is ready for "immediate negotiations" with Israel and urges its new government to abstain from any unilateral action in the West Bank, a spokesman said yesterday.

"President Abbas has expressed the readiness of the Palestinian Authority and the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organisation) to resume immediate negotiations with Ehud Olmert's new Israeli government to implement the roadmap and establish a Palestinian state," Nabil Abu Rudeina told AFP.

The roadmap peace plan, which has made next to no progress since its launch three years ago, had sought to pave the way to an independent Palestinian state living side by side with Israel by 2005.

Abu Rudeina said Abbas would oppose any unilateral measures planned by Israel in the occupied West Bank seeking to redraw the borders of the Jewish state by leaving large parts of the territory and holding on to key settlements.

"We call on Mr Olmert to abstain from any unilateral solution because such measures feed violence and anarchy in the region, " chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat told AFP.

He was speaking as Olmert, whose

government is to be sworn in by parliament Thursday, pledged to fix the final borders of the state, unilaterally from the Palestinians if necessary.

Olmert said he would prefer to reach a negotiated settlement to the Middle East conflict with the Palestinian Authority but indicated that no progress in the peace process was possible while Hamas ran its government.

In an interview with Israel's Maariv newspaper, extracts of which were published on Thursday, the Palestinian Authority president also earlier called on Olmert to immediately resume peace negotiations.

"The position of the Hamas government is not a barrier to the opening of serious discussions. I believe that Ehud Olmert and I can find a common language," he said

Israel has severed all ties with the Palestinian Authority since the rise to power of Hamas, which refuses to recognise Israel's right to exist nor renounce the use of violence.

However former prime minister Shimon Peres, a deputy premier in the incoming government, said in an interview this week that Olmert was likely to meet with Abbas after returning from a summit with US President George W. Bush in Washington at the end of the month.