The Palestinians have told the United States they will accept nothing less than a total freeze in Jewish settlement building ahead of a conference on statehood, a top Palestinian official said yesterday.

Western diplomats say Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is under Western and Arab pressure to go beyond the partial freeze he was expected to announce before the US-sponsored conference this month as a way to bolster Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

The diplomats say Olmert sought to exempt the occupied West Bank's major settlement blocs, which Israel intends to keep under any final peace deal. Washington was cool to that idea, an Israeli source said.

Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said he sent a letter to the Bush administration on Friday demanding that Israel fully meet its obligations under a long-stalled "road map" peace plan.

The road map demands a freeze on "all settlement activity", including so-called "natural growth" of existing settlements. It also calls on the Palestinians to rein in militants.

"Enough games. We want to see an end to settlement expansion and natural growth," Erekat said.

He did not make clear what the Palestinians would do if the demand was not met, putting the onus on the United States and international community to hold Israel to its road map commitments.

About 270,000 Jewish settlers live in the West Bank among 2.5 million Palestinians. The World Court has branded all the settlements on land captured by Israel in the 1967 war as illegal.