Dubai: Palestinians should not engage in any form of dialogue with Israelis before a complete freeze on Israeli colony activities, a prominent Palestinian leader said, as Palestinian and Israeli leaders held talks with Egyptian officials on ways to push forward the stalled peace talks.
Mustafa Barghouti's comments also coincided with Arab League chief Amr Mousa's call to Palestinians not to resume direct talks with Israel without guarantees.
"What we want is a complete freeze to the [Israeli] colonial activities," Barghouti, Secretary General of the political movement called the Palestinian National Initiative, said.
"The Palestinians," Barghouti told Gulf News, "should enter neither direct nor indirect talks without an immediate and actual freeze" on the colonial activities. Otherwise, he warned, "any talks will be like a cover" to Israeli activities.
Mousa said that Palestinians could not resume direct talks with Israel without guarantees, as the Palestinian and Israeli leaders met separately with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who earlier met US Middle East envoy George Mitchell.
Both Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who are taking part in US-brokered indirect talks, left the meetings with Mubarak without making any statements.
However, Mousa said Palestinians couldn't move from indirect discussions to face-to-face talks without "written guarantees"
"We cannot automatically move from one negotiation to another without written guarantees," said Mousa.
Transition
"I felt the Palestinian president was committed to the decisions of the ministerial council that the automatic transition from indirect to direct negotiations is not feasible," he said about his meeting with Abbas on Saturday.
Meanwhile, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmad Abu Al Gaith said he hoped that Israel and the Palestinian Authority would hold direct peace talks by September.
"We must create the circumstances that give both sides the confidence to start direct talks," he told a news conference in Cairo yesterday.
Barghouti stressed that "even the guarantees are not enough. What we need is a total freeze on colonies." He hoped that the Palestinian position will be supported, as "Abbas is under tremendous pressure" to resume the direct talks without conditions.
However, Abbas in recent weeks insisted on "progress" on the issue of borders and security.
Abbas said he would meet Netanyahu if Israel agreed in principle to a Palestinian state based on the borders before Israel's occupation of the West Bank during the 1967 war, with equal land swaps and the presence of an international security force.
