According to the official reports, President Shimon Peres told U. S. Envoy George Mitchell on Friday that Israeli security from attack must be central to the upcoming indirect talks.

Haaretz has reported that Peres said Israel remains committed to the goal of a sovereign Palestinian state. But he said security is at the top of his country's agenda because of rocket fire from Gaza.

Jerusalem/Washington - Israeli President Shimon Peres expressed Saturday his concern about Iran's nuclear plans and insisted on a policy of "prevention and not just of inspection" to stop Iran from gaining nuclear weapons.

In an interview in the Washington Post, Peres said "I'm a little bit worried because the policy should be of prevention, not just of inspection, to prevent the building of a bomb."

"Later on to inspect the procedure of enriching uranium will be very, very difficult, particularly when the Iranians are extremely economical about telling the truth," the Israeli president added.

Tel Aviv  - The Palestinians should not demand an end to all settlement activity before entering peace talks with Israel, Israeli President Shimon Peres said Tuesday hours ahead of a three-way Mideast peace summit in New York.

The Palestinians should drop their precondition for resuming peace talks with Israel, Peres was quoted by Israeli media as saying.

Jerusalem  - Israeli President Shimon Peres was released from hospital Sunday morning, where he spent the night after collapsing during an event in Tel Aviv, the presidential spokeswoman said.

Medical tests the 86-year-old president underwent in hospital overnight and Sunday morning revealed no problems and the president was resuming his full activities, the spokeswoman said.

Peres was answering questions Saturday night at a forum in Tel Aviv when he collapsed. He regained consciousness within seconds, and had to be persuaded to go to hospital for checks.

Tel Aviv (Israel), Sep. 13 : Israeli President Shimon Peres is recovering in a hospital here after fainting on stage during a conference.

Peres, who was elected president in 2007, is under observation in the cardiology department of the Tel Hashomer hospital in Tel Aviv. Sky News reports.

The 86-year-old has had tests but "feels fine" following the incident at the Yitzhak Rabin Centre.

Moscow - Israeli President Shimon Peres on Tuesday slammed the denial of the Holocaust by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a disgrace for the entire Iranian people.

Speaking on a visit with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev in the Russian Black Sea resort city of Sochi, Peres said that although Ahmadinejad had on several occasions denied the mass murder of European Jews by the Nazis, the Israeli leader had hopes for peace between Israel and Iran.

Jerusalem - Israeli President Shimon Peres made a last-ditch plea Thursday to Interior Minister Eli Yishai, asking him not to go ahead with plans to deport the children of foreign workers, saying Israel could not remain "apathetic" to their fate.

"Who better than a people who have suffered bitterly in exile to show sensitivity to fellowman living in its midst," the president wrote in a letter to Yishai, leader of the ultra-religious Shas party.

Jerusalem - Israeli President Shimon Peres presented Pope Benedict XVI with a microscopic Bible, as he welcomed him at his residence in Jerusalem Monday.

The Bible, about the size of a grain of sand, requires an electron microscope to read and was made with the help of nanotechnology, he explained to his guest.

Pope Benedict signed the guest book and as he sat down with Peres to start the meeting, said that "in our faith we are connected with Israel. Your prophets are our prophets."

New York - Israeli President Shimon Peres lashed out on Wednesday at a United Nations-commissioned investigation that found the Israeli Defense Forces were responsible for deaths and damage to UN compounds in Gaza Strip.

"It's outrageous," Peres said in reaction to the findings of the three-member investigative board established by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to seek the truth in the military incidents in the fighting between Israel and Hamas in December and January.

Washington  - Israeli President Shimon Peres said Tuesday his country backs US President Barack Obama's plan to engage in direct talks with Iran.

Peres said it would be the "best thing" if Obama's diplomacy with Tehran prevented the Islamic state from developing nuclear weapons and ended its support for Hezbollah and Hamas.

"We shall be loyal supporters," Peres said after emerging from a meeting with Obama at the White House.

Washington - Israeli President Shimon Peres Monday emphasized to a Washington audience that Israel's right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants peace.

"In our tradition, making history is making peace, and I am sure that peace is his priority," Peres told the annual American-Israel Public Affairs Committee meeting in Washington.

Peres said that when he visits the White House Tuesday and meets with US President Barack Obama, he will "deliver a message of a country which is yearning for peace." (dpa)

Riyadh  - Saudi Arabia's official news agency on Thursday denied that Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah shook Israel President Shimon Peres' hand last November.

"On the margins of an interfaith dialogue sessions last fall, the king spoke with Israeli President Peres, the first such exchange between Saudi and Israeli leaders," US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs William Burns said at a Monday conference on Saudi-US relations in Washington.

Jerusalem  - Israeli President Shimon Peres said Wednesday attacking Iran would only postpone its ability to build an atom bomb.

"I'm not sure that bombing the nuclear facilities is the best solution. You know, the moment there are centrifuges, you can destroy the centrifuges. You cannot destroy the know-how to create centrifuges. You can postpone," he told Israel's Channel 10 television.

Asked if Israel could accept a nuclear Iran, he said: "It's not all only attacking the nuclear facilities."

Jerusalem  - Sixty four years after the defeat of the Nazi regime and the end of World War II, anti-Semitism is still flourishing, Israeli President Shimon Peres warned Monday as he opened the country's annual commemoration of the Nazi's attempted genocide of the Jews of Europe.

"The gas has dissipated, but the poison remains. There are still Holocaust deniers and hot-headed skinheads in the world, those who bear the sort of visceral hatred that leads to racist murder," Peres said at the official ceremony at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Centre in Jerusalem.

Jerusalem  - Israeli President Shimon Peres said Thursday there was no military solution to Iran's nuclear programme.

"All this talk of an Israeli attack in Iran is incorrect," a statement from his office quoted Peres as telling US special envoy George Mitchell.

"The solution," he said, "is not military."

Jerusalem  - Israel's president hosted the country's new and outgoing prime ministers Wednesday for a formal changing of the guards that included a red-carpet welcome and the playing of the national anthem.

President Shimon Peres, whose duties are largely ceremonial, was to address the gathering, as was outgoing premier Ehud Olmert and incoming Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose new government was sworn in by the Knesset late Tuesday.

Prague  - Israeli President Shimon Peres after a meeting with Czech President Vaclav Klaus in Prague on Monday said he was hopeful for a successful conclusion to peace talks with the Palestinians this year.

Peres added that he expected "definite advances" in Israel's relations with its Arab neighbours.

Klaus stressed that politics was not about ideology but compromise.

Jerusalem - Israeli President Shimon Peres on Friday in a New Year's message to the Iranian people sharply criticized the leadership in Tehran.

In an audio message broadcast partly in Farsi ahead of the Iranian news year's holiday of Nowruz, Peres accused the government of Iran of doing everything it could to harm Israel and its people.

Jerusalem - Addressing the swearing-in ceremony for Israel's newly-elected Knesset members, President Shimon Peres called on the parliament to try wrap up a peace treaty with the Palestinians by the end of its four-year term.

"Distinguished Arab leaders have told me that a peace accord with the Palestinians would be recognized as a regional peace agreement that includes Israel," he said.

Jerusalem, Feb. 20 : Israeli President Shimon Peres is expected persuade Kadima leader Tzipi Livni to join a national unity government headed by Likud Chairman Binyamin Netanyahu.

Netanhayu said Israel is facing a difficult situation, and there is a need for a broad-based government.

"A wide national-unity government is especially necessary in light of the major challenges Israel is facing from Iran, terror and the international economic crisis," The Jerusalem Post quoted Netanhayu, as saying.

Netanhayu's attempts have not persuaded Livni or Ehud Barak's Labor party to join on one platform.