Israeli PM to propose direct talks with Palestine leader Abbas

PanARMENIAN.Net - Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu will propose holding direct talks with Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas when he meets his counterpart Salam Fayyad in Jerusalem next week, his office said on Wednesday, April 11, according to AFP.

The Israeli prime minister is to hold a rare meeting with his Palestinian counterpart and two other senior officials from Ramallah in Jerusalem on April 17, a spokesman from his office said earlier.

It will be the first top-level meeting between the two sides since the peace process ground to a halt more than 18 months ago in a bitter dispute over Jewish settlement building.

At the meeting, Netanyahu is to propose "raising the level of talks" and holding face-to-face negotiations with Abbas, his office said.

But Abbas's political adviser appeared less than impressed with Netanyahu's proposal.

"If Netanyahu wants to meet President Abbas, he must first announce that he's stopping settlements," Nimr Hammad told AFP in a clear sign the Palestinians were not backing down from their central demand for resuming talks - that Israel halt its settlement building.

For the Palestinians, it was the issue of Jewish settlements which caused the latest attempt at direct negotiations to break down just weeks after they were launched to great fanfare in September 2010. Since then, international efforts to draw the two sides back into dialogue have repeatedly failed to gain traction.