US freeze bid fails EU regrets Israel's rejection OCCUPIED JERUSALEM: The Mideast peace process lay in tatters Wednesday after Washington admitted defeat in its efforts to secure an Israeli freeze on settlement building, the Palestinians' condition for resuming talks. Speaking late Tuesday, US officials admitted top-level efforts to coax Israel into imposing new curbs on West Bank settlement construction had gone nowhere, prompting Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to declare a crisis in peace efforts but backslapping among Israeli hardliners. Without a new freeze, the Palestinians have refused to negotiate, effectively deadlocking direct peace talks that opened Sept. 2 only to run aground just weeks later when building resumed in the settlements. “We have been pursuing a moratorium as a means to create conditions for a return to meaningful and sustained negotiations,” US State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said in New York. “After a considerable effort, we have concluded that this does not create a firm basis to work towards our shared goal of a framework agreement.” Speaking in Athens, the Palestinian leader said: “There is no doubt that there is a crisis.” Top Abbas aide Yasser Abed Rabbo told Voice of Palestine radio that Israeli recalcitrance had torpedoed the US efforts. “The policy and the efforts of the US administration failed because of the blow it received from the Israeli government.” But a spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Washington's announcement marked a welcome acknowledgement by US President Barack Obama's administration that freezing construction was not the way to achieve peace. “We said from the outset that settlements were not the root of the conflict and that it was only a Palestinian excuse for refusing to talk,” Nir Hefetz said. Israeli and Palestinian officials are now expected to visit Washington next week for separate talks with the Americans on ways to keep the peace process alive, Crowley said. Israeli media said US Middle East envoy George Mitchell would meet separately with Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erakat and his Israeli counterpart, Yitzhak Molho, in the coming days. It now appears the two sides are likely to return to some form of indirect, or “proximity” negotiations similar to those held between May and September, Crowley suggested. “We will have further conversations on the substance with the parties, and we will continue to try to find ways to create the kind of confidence that will eventually, we hope, allow them to engage directly,” he said. Tony Blair, envoy for the Middle East diplomatic Quartet of the European Union, Russia, the United Nations and the United States, told journalists in Occupied Jerusalem the decision did not mean the collapse of peace efforts but was more of a hiccup. The European Union said it regretted Israel's rejection of a new freeze. Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit urged the international community to call an “end game”' in peace efforts and set clear deadlines for reaching an agreement. – Agence France
