Ramallah - Palestinians may yet accept a framework agreement for a peace treaty with Israel if a final deal is unreachable by the end of the year, a senior advisor to President Mahmoud Abbas said Tuesday.

Nimr Hammad, Abbas' political advisor, told Voice of Palestine Radio that even though a framework agreement "is not what we want and does not meet our expectations, it however will keep things moving and this means pressure on Israel."

He said this issue will be discussed in a three-way meeting Abbas will hold with US President George W Bush and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh on Saturday. Jordan's King Abdullah may also join the meeting, he said.

Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert pledged at last year's Annapolis peace summit to try and reach a peace deal by the end of 2008, and Israeli and Palestinian officials have been negotiating the so-called core issues of their conflict since the turn of the year.

However, some Israeli officials have since muted their optimism about reaching a peace agreement by the end of the year, and have instead spoken about producing a framework, or draft, peace treaty by the deadline, as Israel and Egypt did when negotiating their peace treaty between 1977 to 1979.

The sides first produced the "Camp David Framework for Peace" in September 1978, and continued negotiating, finally signing a peace treaty - Israel's first with an Arab state - on March 26 1979. (dpa)