Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas yesterday demanded a total Israeli freeze on work on West Bank settlements after a "difficult" meeting with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who is struggling to revive stagnant peace talks.
"Israel should honour its obligations especially with regards to the total halt on the settlements," Abbas told reporters after the meeting in Abu Dhabi, adding that no breakthrough had been reached.
"The problem with the Israeli government is that it refuses to stop building settlements," he said.
The Palestinians' chief negotiator Saeb Erakat told AFP the US delegation informed them that Israel rejected calls for a complete freeze on settlement construction in the whole West Bank, including annexed Arab east Jerusalem.
"The gap between us was very deep and is widening even more," he admitted, adding that the meeting was "frank and difficult".
Abbas told Clinton the Palestinians will not agree to resume peace talks without a complete freeze on Jewish settlement construction, Erakat said.
The offer which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made in talks with US Middle East envoy George Mitchell in Jerusalem on Friday "does not include a complete freeze on settlement activities," Erakat said.
Mitchell joined Clinton in Abu Dhabi for her talks with Abbas. She was due to fly on to Israel later for talks with Netanyahu.
Israeli officials declined to comment on Abbas's renewed insistence on a complete settlement freeze prior to those talks.
Defence Minister Ehud Barak said only that peace negotiations should be launched "in the coming weeks".
"It is essential that both sides make an effort to start the negotiations. This is a unique opportunity. A deadlock would only serve Hamas and the radical elements in the region," Barak's office quoted him as saying. But Abbas spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina blamed Israel's "intransigence" for the failure to relaunch peace talks, halted last December after Israel launched a deadly offensive in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.
The Palestinian leader said prospects for relaunching negotiations have been further complicated by Israel's intensification of settlement activity in east Jerusalem.
"The question (of Jerusalem) was at the centre of discussions with Mrs Clinton," he said, adding that "Jerusalem is threatened" and "peace starts in Jerusalem".
"Without Jerusalem, there will be no point in peace," he warned, saying that "the American administration, in addition to being a mediator, has to press Israel (to respect) its commitments" including in Jerusalem "whose annexation is not recognised by the United Nations or the international community".
Israel captured east Jerusalem with the rest of the West Bank in the 1967 Middle East war and later annexed it in a move never recognised by the international community.
It considers the whole city to be its "eternal, indivisible capital" and does not regard Jewish neighbourhoods in east Jerusalem as settlements.
Last week, Clinton gave US President Barack Obama a downbeat report on his administration's so-far frustrated efforts to forge Middle East peace.
Obama has made the issue a cornerstone of his foreign policy, and cajoled Netanyahu and Abbas into joining him at a summit in New York last month.