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Netanyahu to Seek Help on Direct Palestinian Talks in Meeting With Mubarak
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he will seek Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s help to arrange direct peace talks with Palestinian leaders, who are hesitating to meet face-to-face with him.
Netanyahu, who held talks with President Barack Obama at the White House last week, will meet Mubarak in Cairo on July 13, he told his Cabinet today in Jerusalem.
“I’m going to talk to him about advancing direct talks with the Palestinians,” Netanyahu said in remarks broadcast on Israel Radio.
Both Netanyahu and Obama said after their meeting that they want to move the current U.S.-mediated indirect talks between Israelis and Palestinians to face-to-face negotiations. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who met with Obama in Washington a month ago, said yesterday that it would be “pointless” to enter direct talks if the so-called proximity talks don’t move the sides closer to agreement.
Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat has said Abbas won’t negotiate directly with Netanyahu unless Israel freezes all settlement construction in the West Bank. Netanyahu said direct talks should begin immediately “without preconditions.”
The Israeli government declared a 10-month moratorium in November on most building in the West Bank, excluding projects involving public buildings such as synagogues and kindergartens. The limited freeze, due to expire Sept. 26, allowed the completion of some 3,000 housing units in which construction was already underway.
Longer Than 2012
Netanyahu, speaking in an interview broadcast today on “Fox News Sunday,” said he doesn’t think negotiators will be able to forge a deal that would lead to a Palestinian state by 2012.
“It’s going to take longer than that” to implement a negotiated peace, he said. The interview was conducted while Netanyahu visited the U.S. last week.
Discussing his meeting with Obama during the Cabinet meeting, Netanyahu said ties with the U.S. are “stable and strong.” The U.S. leader “recognizes Israel’s security needs,” he said.
Netanyahu indicated in New York last week that he doesn’t want to extend the construction moratorium beyond September in the hope that Abbas will agree to meet face-to-face.
“So far seven months have passed and they haven’t come in,” Netanyahu said at the Council of Foreign Relations. “We should not waste any more time.”
Still, he expressed confidence that he and Abbas could reach an agreement if given a year to negotiate, saying, “ I intend to confound the skeptics.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Jonathan Ferziger in Tel Aviv at jferziger@bloomberg.net
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