Peace process has hit its first snag, with all of the pressure turning on Israel and the eyes of the world on the settlement building freeze expiration date. Just as God had prophesied!
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Mideast officials fly to US as talks crisis looms
Top Israeli and Palestinian officials on Sunday headed for the United States where they were expected to seek ways to break a deadlock over settlements which is threatening to sabotage peace talks.
Israeli President Shimon Peres left shortly after midnight on a four-day visit to coincide with the UN General Assembly meeting in New York, and a few hours later Defence Minister Ehud Barak set off for talks in Washington.
Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, currently in Amman, was also to fly to New York on Sunday evening for the annual sitting, with efforts under way to arrange a meeting with US President Barack Obama, a senior Palestinian official told AFP.
“There are also preparations for a meeting between (Israeli premier Benjamin) Netanyahu, Obama and Abbas,” he said. “There is an expectation that they will meet.”
Netanyahu’s office said he had no plans to fly to the United States this week, and would not say whether he would meet Abbas before the settlements freeze expires later this month.
Israel and the Palestinians began long-awaited peace negotiations earlier this month, but the talks may well collapse if the two sides fail to resolve a bitter dispute over an Israeli freeze on settlement construction.
So far, Israel has stubbornly refused to extend the partial 10-month moratorium on new construction. The Palestinians have vowed to pull out of the talks if the building resumes.
Addressing ministers of his right-wing Likud party after Sunday’s weekly cabinet meeting, Netanyahu once again laid out Israel’s position: that the moratorium will end as planned.
“Last week, I held political talks in Sharm el-Sheikh and Jerusalem. I can’t give any detail about the content of the talks because of its sensitivity. What I can say is that regarding the freeze, there has been no change in our position,” he reassured them.
Last week, two days of trilateral talks in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh and Jerusalem, which brought together Abbas, Netanyahu and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, failed to break the impasse.
Washington is putting huge pressure on the two sides to reach a compromise over the issue, but it was up to Netanyahu to withstand pressure to extend the moratorium, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said on Sunday.
“There is no doubt that there is massive pressure, but that is the role of leaders — to stand up to this pressure,” the far-right minister told army radio.
“If we aren’t able to withstand pressure on a relatively simple issue like building in Judaea and Samaria (the West Bank), how will we defend our other national interests?”
Efforts to reach a last-minute compromise now look set to shift to the United States.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, an Israeli official told AFP that the main negotiators would hold talks there with the aim of setting up the next face-to-face meeting between the leaders.
“The negotiators will be meeting this week in North America where they will be planning the round of talks at a leadership level,” he said, without giving further details.
Elsewhere, Barak, who reportedly backs an extension of the freeze, was set to meet with both Clinton and with his American counterpart Robert Gates during his five-day trip.
And Peres was expected on Monday to address the UN’s millennium summit in a speech which would explain why Netanyahu could not extend the settlement freeze, the Jerusalem Post reported.
He was also expected to speak alongside Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad at a conference organised by former US president Bill Clinton, which Barak would also attend.
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myBlessedHope 