JERUSALEM: US envoy George Mitchell and EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton converged on Israel and the Palestinian territories Thursday in a bid to rescue peace talks on the verge of collapse.
Mitchell was due to meet Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas at midday (1000 GMT) at his headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah, while Ashton was due to arrive in the region for two days of talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Abbas and Mitchell.
The diplomats are seeking to stave off the breakdown of peace negotiations, which only restarted this month, in the wake of Israel’s refusal to extend a 10-month moratorium on Jewish settlement building in the West Bank, as demanded by the Palestinians and urged by the European Union and the United States.
The moratorium ran out on Sunday but the Palestinians have delayed a decision on whether or not to quit the talks until early next week, when Abbas will meet Arab foreign ministers in Cairo.
On Saturday, he is to consult with senior leaders of his Fatah party and with the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization.
Netanyahu, whose ruling coalition depends heavily on nationalist hardliners close to the settler movement, has baulked at renewing the partial freeze on construction while urging Abbas to stick with the talks, which were relaunched on Sept. 2 after a 20-month hiatus.
Following a meeting with the US envoy on Wednesday, Netanyahu’s office quoted Mitchell as saying he had come to bring a message of reassurance about Washington’s commitment to reaching a comprehensive peace in the region, despite the numerous "potholes" along the way.
Israel’s Maariv daily reported that in return for a 60-day extension of the settlement freeze, President Barack Obama was offering Netanyahu a guarantee that he would supply Israel with advanced weapons and block any attempt to bring the issue of Palestinian statehood to the UN Security Council.
Israel’s Y-net news website said senior Obama advisor Dennis Ross had told key senators that the president wanted "two months more of a freeze."
Palestinian media quoted a Palestinian official they did not identify as saying that the next 48 hours would be crucial in US efforts to persuade Israel to extend the moratorium and keep the negotiations afloat.
Ashton, under fire at home for failing to raise the EU’s profile in the Middle East, announced on Wednesday that she would make a previously unscheduled stopover in the region on her way back from a US trip.
"I have decided to travel directly from the United States to the Middle East as a matter of priority to urge both Israelis and Palestinians to find a satisfactory way for negotiations to continue and gather momentum," she said in a statement.
"As I have said, the EU regrets the Israeli decision not to extend the moratorium on settlements.
She said she had already spoken by telephone to both Abbas and Netanyahu "to express the EU’s determination to help them find a way forward in the talks".
French President Nicolas Sarkozy this week called for the EU to have a greater role in faltering Israel-Palestinian peace talks, saying current US-led efforts were not working.
"I observe that, 10 years after Camp David, we have made no progress and perhaps we’ve even gone backwards in terms of resuming dialogue," he said referring to 2000 talks at the US presidential retreat whose collapse was followed by the second Palestinian uprising in which some 4,700 people, mainly Palestinians, died.
Netanyahu’s office announced this week that he had accepted an invitation from Sarkozy to meet Abbas in Paris next month.
