ANKARA/ATHENS (AFP-EJP)---Both Turkey and Greece will attend the multinational Middle East peace conference in the United States next Tuesday.

The Turkish foreign ministry said Foreign Minister Ali Babacan will participate in the meeting.

US President George W. Bush, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas will open the conference in Annapolis, Maryland, on Tuesday involving more than 40 countries from around the world.

Turkey, which has close ties with both Israel and the Palestinians, hosted Abbas and Israeli President Shimon Peres last week for talks which resulted in the signing of a trialteral deal to set up joint industrial zones in the West Bank under the leadership of a Turkish business group.

The Middle East peace process has been frozen since Bush’s predecessor Bill Clinton tried to broker a final settlement in 2000 at Camp David.

After a lot of pressure on the US by the Greek government, Greece was invited to the Annapolis summit. The country will be represented by its Foreign Minister Dora Bakoyannis.

Greece started to pressure first the Israeli side and then the US for the invitation, in an attempt to show that it wants to play a regional role in the Middle East but also because Turkey was invited.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan.

Observers in Athens recall the fact that in 1982, Greek ships evacuated Yasser Arafat and his men from Lebanon and brought them to Greece.

Since she was sworn in as Foreign Minister in February 2006, Dora Bakoyannis started immediately to press for a role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

During the last Lebanon war, in 2006, she sent again ships to evacuate foreign civilians trapped in Lebanon, and while Greece was a member of the UN Security Council, she organized, in September 2006, a meeting of Foreign Ministers, the first in 30 years at this level about the Middle East.

Since her father, former Prime Minister Costantinos Mitsotakis, recognized Israel de jure in 1990, Greece has left its one sided pro-Arab stand and started with a more balanced policy.

The change started in the mid 90’s with then Foreign Minister George Papandreou, today’s leader of the opposition Socialist party.

During Mahmoud Abbas last visit to Greece in April, at a joint press conference Bakoyannis called on the Palestinian leader to curb violence and to release Israeli soldier Gilat Shalit.

Sources in the Greek Foreign Ministry say that Bakoyannis is contemplating the idea of hosting, after the Annapolis meeting, a conference in Greece with the parties involved in order to further the peace process.