US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged the Israeli and Palestinian leaders to resume peace talks immediately and seemed to accept Israel's refusal to halt settlement building first.
Mrs Clinton agreed with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at a news conference in Jerusalem that limits on Jewish settlement expansion, offered by Israel, would be ‘unprecedented’ and that Palestinian demands for a full freeze should not be a pre-condition to negotiations.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who was stung last month by Mr Obama's shift from calling publicly for a ‘freeze’ to ‘restraint’ on Israeli settlements, made clear after meeting Mrs Clinton earlier today that he would not return to negotiating table without a complete halt in the building.
But Mrs Clinton and Mr Netanyahu, speaking later in Jerusalem, made clear that neither accepted that as a valid reason not to talk.
‘There has never been a precondition. It's always been an issue within the negotiations,’ she said, endorsing Mr Netanyahu's assertion that Mr Abbas's demand for a settlement freeze before resuming peace talks was ‘unprecedented’.
‘Where we are right now is to try to get into negotiations,’ she added.
Mrs Clinton's visit to the Middle East is her second since Mr Obama took office in January.
Senior US envoy George Mitchell has been shuttling between Israeli and Palestinian leaders every few weeks and was with the Secretary of State today.
Mr Abbas insists Israel freeze settlement activity under a 2003 road map for peace, a demand Mr Netanyahu has rejected.
Mr Netanyahu has given in to US pressure to talk of negotiating the creation of a Palestinian state, but only if it is demilitarised and if Palestinians agree to recognise Israel as a Jewish state.
