US given one month to rekindle peace talks

Negotiations with Israel are not bearing fruit, Arab League says, but foreign ministers will not advise Palestinian leader on how to proceed with talks.

SIRTE, LIBYA // The United States has one month to try to rekindle failing Israeli-Palestinian direct peace talks before Arab countries resort to other measures, an Arab diplomat said yesterday.

As leaders met at an Arab League summit, the diplomat told AFP that the call to "give the US administration a one-month chance to seek the resumption of negotiations, including a halt to settlement" building, would be made in a resolution to be adopted late yesterday by the Arab League Follow-up Committee.

Under the draft resolution, the committee grouping 13 Arab foreign ministers would meet again within one month "to examine the policy alternatives if the diplomatic efforts fail", the official said on condition of anonymity.

Meanwhile, the Associated Press reported that diplomats in some Arab countries were proposing that Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority president, return to indirect negotiations to avoid a total breakdown of the peace talks.

The two diplomats with the Arab League, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the proposal for a return to indirect talks was being considered as a way to buy time and save face, while avoiding a formal collapse of the negotiations.

They said Egypt and Jordan - the only two with peace deals with Israel - along with several other moderate Arab countries support the proposal.

Amr Moussa, the league's secretary general, said the league does not believe the peace talks are bearing fruit, but stopped short of asking the Palestinians to walk away.

"There are no talks at the moment because the position of the Israelis is very, very negative. They are not co-operating in the negotiations," Mr Moussa said.

The committee was to meet the Palestinian delegation last night but would not advise Mr Abbas on what he should do next.

"We will listen to him and will discuss the situation," he said, "but we are not going to tell him what he should do." Mr Abbas last week told George Mitchell, the US Middle East envoy, that he would resign from his post if the construction in settlements continued, the Tel Aviv-based daily Haaretz reported yesterday, quoting sources close to the Palestinian Authority.

Launched in Washington five weeks ago, the talks hit a dead end on September 26 when the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, refused to extend a halt to construction of Jewish settlements, which he had said would last 10 months.

Mr Abbas's spokesman, Nabil Abu Rdainah, said earlier the Palestinian leader would tell the Arab states that "resuming negotiations requires a full freeze of settlement activities".

Mr Abbas has said he wants to go on negotiating but cannot unless the building of new homes for Jewish settlers is frozen for "three to four months more to give peace a chance".

Palestinians regard settlement expansion as a threat to chances of a viable state on land Israel captured in the 1967 war. Mr Netanyahu says it would be tragic if Mr Abbas walked away over an issue he says is irrelevant to the possible outcome of talks - a peace deal to end 60 years of conflict and create a Palestinian state.

The senior Palestinian official Yasser Abed Rabbo said on Thursday he saw no hope of a serious peace process with Mr Netanyahu, in some of the darkest comments to date on the US-mediated talks.

* With additional reporting by Agence France-Presse and Reuters

HAMAS PAIR KILLED IN RAID

JERUSALEM // Israeli troops killed two senior Hamas militants in an early-morning raid yesterday in the West Bank city of Hebron.

The two gunmen were wanted in connection with the killing of four Israelis near Hebron on August 31, just as new Israeli-Palestinian peace talks were getting under way, the Israeli military said.

Media aligned with Hamas in the Gaza Strip also said the men were behind the Hebron shooting.

Elsewhere yesterday, two stone-throwing Palestinian boys were run over and injured by a car driven by a Jewish settler leader in an East Jerusalem flashpoint, police and witnesses said.

The incident occurred after Friday prayers in the run-down neighbourhood of Silwan just south of Jerusalem's Old City.

* Associated Press and Agence France-Presse