US negotiators were today given a week to broker a deal keeping the Middle East peace talks on track.

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas said he would wait at least until next Monday before deciding whether to pull out the talks following the end of the temporary Israeli ban on West Bank settlement construction, giving a breathing space for the US mediators to produce a compromise.

Mr Abbas said he would consult the Palestinian leadership before discussing it with the 22-member Arab League next week.

"We will not have any quick reactions," he said. "After this chain of meetings, we will be able to put out a position that clarifies the Palestinian and Arab opinion on this issue now that Israel has refused to freeze settlements."

The building restrictions expired at midnight yesterday with no sign Israel was heeding US and Palestinian pressure to keep them in place.

That threw the peace talks, which only restarted three weeks ago, into doubt. But the Americans said they were still working with Israeli and Palestinian negotiators to find a formula that would keep the negotiations alive.

The Obama administration's special Middle East peace envoy George Mitchell is returning to the region to add urgency to efforts to break the deadlock.

Mr Abbas had urged Israel to extend the settlement slowdown for three or four more months to allow for a discussion of "fundamental issues" in negotiations.

Jewish settlers in the West Bank marked the end of the building curbs by sending thousands of blue and while balloons - the colours of the Israeli flag - into the air and starting work on a new kindergarten. They vowed to build thousands of new homes.

But today there was only a smattering of construction in different settlements across the West Bank.

Settler leaders acknowledged activity would be minimal in coming months, in part because banks and developers are reluctant to commit to new projects out of fear that building will be stopped again Palestinians regard settlement as a major obstacle to peace because the construction is on land they claim for part of their future state. Some 300,000 Israeli settlers live in communities scattered across the West Bank, in addition to 180,000 Jewish Israelis living in east Jerusalem, the area of the holy city claimed by the Palestinians as their capital.

Immediately after the restrictions expired at midnight, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appealed to Mr Abbas to keep negotiating.

Israeli defense officials said Defence Minister Ehud Barak has floated a proposal under which any future construction - even projects with all the necessary permits - would need his personal approval.

Then Mr Netanyahu would in effect be able to leave the building restrictions in place without openly declaring it.

Under heavy US pressure, Mr Netanyahu persuaded his hard-line Cabinet to agree to the slowdown last November in a bid to bring the Palestinians back to the negotiating table after a breakdown of nearly two years.

The Palestinians initially dismissed the gesture because it did not halt construction on thousands of settlement apartments already under way.

After the US-mediated peace talks were launched earlier this month in Washington, the Palestinians demanded Israel maintain the curbs.

Mr Netanyahu - a settlement champion who just last year grudgingly endorsed the notion of a Palestinian state - had faced heavy pressure within his pro-settler governing coalition to resume construction.

Any negotiations would be complicated by the rival Palestinian governments in the West Bank, which Mr Abbas controls, and in the Gaza Strip, which is ruled by Islamic Hamas militants who overran the territory in June 2007.

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