WASHINGTON (AFP) – U.S. efforts to broker peace between Israel and the Palestinians have made progress since last year's talks in Annapolis, but were unlikely to produce a comprehensive deal before the next U.S. president takes office, lawmakers were told Thursday.

Since Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas and then Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert relaunched the peace process in Maryland in November, ""we have seen significant advances ... and substantial progress,"" a top U.S. diplomat in charge of Middle Eastern affairs, David Welch, told a Senate subcommittee.
Among the advances were improved security cooperation between Israelis and the Palestinians and greater fiscal oversight in the Palestinian Authority, said Welch.
But he fudged when pressed by Senators John Kerry, a Democrat, and Republican Chuck Hagel on whether the key goal set at Annapolis -- a comprehensive peace deal between the Israelis and Palestinians by the time President George W. Bush leaves office in January -- was within reach.
""We have, I think it's 116 days left of the Bush administration,"" said Kerry.
""We have 40-plus days until there's an election here; we may or may not see a government in the next weeks in Israel, and President Abbas? Let's see what happens when his term is up in January,"" he said, pointing to some of the political potholes on the road to a peace deal.
Hagel said he has seen a downturn in stability and security in the Middle East during Bush's two, four-year terms, and repeated Kerry's question about what results could be expected from the peace process before the next U.S. president takes office in January.
Welch answered: ""I would like to see that this negotiating track that we embarked on does move ahead.
""Ideally, it would produce an agreement. If it doesn't, it must be continued, and continued on a substantial basis. We try to build that every single day,"" he said.
The career diplomat said the fact that ""a state called Palestine has become an articulated goal"" was another sign that the peace process was moving forward.
At last year's meeting in Maryland, which ended a seven-year freeze in the peace process, the Israelis and Palestinians agreed to create a mechanism to monitor implementation of a ""roadmap"" for peace, which calls for a Palestinian state living in peace alongside a secure Israel.
But Kerry said the acceptance of the idea of a Palestinian state ""doesn't satisfy anybody any more in terms of accomplishment or big change.""
""Ground on that notion was broken a long time ago. The debate now is over how Swiss-cheesy this new state is going to look -- what sort of rights of access are going to go with it, what happens to the (Israeli) settlements, and so forth,"" he said.
During a visit to Washington in April -- five months after Annapolis -- Abbas told U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that ""the continuation of Israeli settlements"" in the West Bank were the main obstacle to a peace deal.