JERUSALEM, August 6, 2008 (AFP) - Israel will release more than 150 Palestinian prisoners later this month as a goodwill gesture to president Mahmud Abbas as part of US-backed peace talks, officials said on Wednesday.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's spokesman Mark Regev said the release came in response to a request by Abbas.

'We hope this gesture will help the peace process,' he told reporters after the latest meeting between the two leaders, referring to US-backed talks formally relaunched at an international conference in November.

Senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat said the meeting was 'successful' and that Israel had agreed to release more than 150 Palestinian prisoners.

'We agreed with the Israelis there will be a new batch of prisoners released on the 25th of August,' Erakat told reporters after the meeting.

Erakat declined to give names but said Abbas urged Israel to release several prominent and long-serving prisoners, including Marwan Barghuti, a popular leader in Abbas's Fatah party seen as a leading contender to succeed the Palestinian president.

Barghuti, a West Bank leader considered to have masterminded the second Palestinian uprising in 2000, was jailed in 2004 and is serving five life sentences for his role in deadly attacks.

Abbas also wants Israel to release prominent leaders from other factions, including parliament speaker Aziz Dweik from the Islamist Hamas movement, and Ahmed Saadat, the leader of the leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Erakat said.

There are currently more than 11,000 Palestinians jailed in Israel, including at least 85 women and children, and 11 seriously ill people.

In July the Lebanese Hezbollah militia celebrated what it called a major victory when it traded the bodies of two Israeli soldiers for five Lebanese prisoners and the remains of some 200 Lebanese and Palestinian fighters.

Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, has been trying to secure a similar deal to swap the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, seized in a deadly cross-border raid from the territory in June 2006, for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners.

Wednesday's decision drew swift criticism from Israel's right-wing opposition Likud party, which said it endangered efforts to free Shalit.

'(The decision) to liberate Palestinian terrorists without receiving anything in return is a mistake for security and efforts to liberate Gilad Shalit,' Likud MP Gideon Saar said in a statement.

Wednesday's meeting was the first between the two leaders since Olmert's surprise announcement one week ago that he would step down as premier after a Kadima party primary on September 17 amid corruption allegations.

Olmert's imminent departure has cast a shadow over the peace efforts relaunched in November, when both sides pledged to try to reach a full agreement by the end of 2008.

Regev insisted however that 'this peace process will continue. All sides are committed to the process.'

Olmert and Abbas have met roughly twice a month since talks were formally revived at November's conference, and Erakat said the two leaders would meet again in the next two weeks.

Erakat insisted however that the substance of the talks was more important than the timing. 'We want an agreement, a fair agreement, and I don't think that the time should be a sword on our necks,' he said.

He also said the Palestinians would never accept a 'partial' or 'interim' agreement, and that all the central issues in the conflict, from the fate of Palestinian refugees to the status of Jerusalem, would have to be addressed.

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, who has been heading the Israeli negotiating team, is running neck and neck in opinion polls for the Kadima leadership with Transport Minister Shaul Mofaz, a hawkish former general seen as less invested in the peace talks.

If Olmert's successor for the leadership of the Kadima party fails to form a coalition and early elections are held, opinion polls suggest the hawkish Likud party leader Benjamin Netanyahu would win the top office by a large margin.