Obama, Netanyahu to meet as US peace effort flounders

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(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-11-09 14:50

WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama was due to hold talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington on Monday amid floundering US efforts to jump-start stalled Middle East peace talks.

The meeting between the two leaders is likely to anger Palestinians, who are already frustrated by what they perceive as backsliding by the Obama administration on the contentious issue of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.

An Obama administration official said the president would meet Netanyahu, in Washington to address a forum of North American Jewish leaders, but offered no details about what they would discuss.

There had been doubts about whether Obama would even meet Netanyahu until Sunday afternoon, when the US official confirmed Israeli media reports.

Aides to Netanyahu said the two leaders would discuss the peace process and the nuclear stand-off with Iran.

Despite the Obama administration giving high priority to restarting peace talks and dispatching envoys to the region, prospects for a meeting between the Israelis and Palestinians soon have grown ever fainter.

Obama's drive to revive the peace process faced a setback last week. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, a pivotal partner in any negotiations, accused Washington of retreating from its demand for a freeze on settlements and threatened not to stand in elections in January.

Such a move could force a postponement in peace talks for months to come.

Obama has eased US pressure on Israel over settlements, calling for restraint in construction where he had earlier pushed for a freeze. Palestinians say that shift in policy has killed any hope of reviving negotiations soon.

Netanyahu has rebuffed Obama's call for an immediate halt to construction of settlements and said it should not be a precondition to restarting peace talks.

The settlement issue is a major obstacle in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and has opened the most serious rift in Israel's relations with the United States in a decade.

Washington says it still wants a freeze on settlement building but that it need not be a precondition for talks, as Abbas, a moderate supported by the West, is demanding.

"We are ready to talk and the Palestinians aren't. It's as simple as that," Netanyahu told reporters traveling with him to Washington on Sunday.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton faced strong Arab criticism over the US stance on the settlement issue during a visit to the region last week.

She insisted Washington still wanted a freeze on settlement construction but believed that resuming peace talks was the best way to curb them.

A US official said the push for talks was aimed in part at seeing what Netanyahu envisioned when he offered to negotiate immediately. Thus far most of the pressure had been on Abbas to agree to talks, the official said.

Netanyahu will likely address the issue when he speaks at the forum of Jewish leaders in Washington on Monday. Obama was also due to speak there, on Tuesday, but canceled his appearance in order to attend a memorial service for soldiers killed in a mass shooting at a US military base last week.