SHUNEH, Jordan (AFP) -- Arab League chief Amr Mussa on Friday dismissed an offer from Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to meet Arab leaders on their peace initiative as nothing more than a "gimmick."

"This is a gimmick that we have heard before," Mussa told participants at the World Economic Forum on the shores of the Dead Sea in Jordan.

"What we are interested in ... is an answer from the Israeli side about peace," he said, referring to a five-year-old Arab peace initiative which was revived at an Arab summit in Saudi Arabia in March.

"Until now we have no answer coming from the Israeli side ... No (declared) plan, no policy, that we can interpret as a hand stretched out for peace," Mussa said.

"A serious step would open the door for serious negotiations," he added.

On Tuesday Olmert told Nobel laureates gathered in Jordan he was ready to meet Arab leaders to discuss their peace initiative but that no conditions should be set in advance.

"I invite these 22 leaders of the Arab nation that are ready to make that kind of peace with Israel to come, whenever they want, to sit down with us and start to talk and present their ideas," Olmert said.

"If it is difficult and they are ready to invite me to any place where the 22 will gather together, I am ready to come," he said ahead of talks with Jordan's King Abdullah II, who pressed him to embrace the Arab peace bid.

The Saudi-drafted blueprint offers Israel normal ties if it withdraws from all land conquered in the 1967 Middle East war and calls for the creation of a Palestinian state and the return of refugees.

Israel rejected it when it was first floated in 2002 but Olmert has since cautiously welcomed parts of the initiative although Israel wants amendments to the refugee issue.

Jordan and Egypt, the only two Arab countries to have peace treaties with Israel, have been tasked by the Arab League to promote the peace bid.