Jerusalem ? Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, in an unprecedented public acknowledgment, called continued Israeli construction in West Bank settlements a breach of Israel’s obligations under a recently revived peace plan.

The remarks, published Friday in The Jerusalem Post daily, came just days before President Bush arrives in the region to build on the momentum created at a Mideast peace conference in Annapolis, Md.

Bush, in a separate interview, urged Israel to uphold its commitment to remove the settlement outposts in the West Bank.

“The Israeli government announced that it plans to get rid of the unauthorized outposts, and that’s what we expect them to do. We expect the Israeli government to honor its commitments,” Bush told the daily Yediot Ahronot in the interview, published Friday in Hebrew.

Israel has long maintained it has the right to continue building in existing settlements to account for “natural growth” of the existing population – something the peace plan explicitly bans. But Olmert acknowledged that Israel was not honoring its commitments – a significant development because Israel has never before admitted it was violating the internationally backed “road map” peace plan.