Arab League committee gives US last chance

Ramallah: The Arab League Middle East Peace Process Follow Up Committee has agreed on giving a last chance to the US to resume negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

A senior Fatah official familiar with the negotiations told Gulf News that the Arabs want a time frame to resolve the dispute.

The official said that the last-chance strategy would hopefully put pressure on the Israeli government to accept the peace process.

The official said that the Americans were making huge efforts to make the negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians a success. He said that the form of negotiations the Americans were currently suggesting involved slowing down the colony construction in the West Bank but not freezing it.

He said Americans were suggesting what they described as "indirect negotiations" where the Americans would hold talks with the Palestinians and the Israelis separately.

Abbas disappointed

The official, however, said that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has expressed disappointment over the way the Americans had been handling the negotiations. He said that Abbas had expressed his disappointment to US Middle East Special Envoy George Mitchell during their meeting in Ramallah on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, the Israeli daily Haaretz reported yesterday that the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was committed to Mitchell's suggestions and that Israel would agree to discuss the core issues in the indirect negotiations.

Haaretz said that so far, Netanyahu had refused to negotiate borders, colonies and the status of Occupied Jerusalem before the issue of security arrangements was fully resolved.