Middle East talks 'set to restart'
An agreement between Israel and the Palestinians to resume direct peace talks is imminent, US officials said today.
Resumption of the talks would mark a diplomatic victory for the White House, which has struggled to get both sides back to the bargaining table.
In Brussels a European diplomat said Israel and the Palestinians would hold “direct talks” in Washington on September 2.
Earlier US State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said: “We think we are very, very close to a decision by the parties to enter into direct negotiations.”
He said Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had called Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and spoken with Jordanian Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the special representative of the “Quartet” of Mideast peacemakers – the US, the UN, the European Union and Russia.
Plans called for the Quartet and the US to release separate statements saying the stalled talks will resume early next month in either the US or Egypt, officials said.
The two statements would serve as invitations for the talks, they said. The Israelis and Palestinians were expected to promptly accept the invitations.
The Palestinians had been balking at direct talks until the Quartet repeated their support for a March statement calling for a peace deal based on the pre-1967 Mideast war borders, and for talks to be completed within two years.
But Israel rejected that, saying it amounted to placing conditions on the negotiations.
US officials said the talks could begin around September 1 in either Washington, Cairo or the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm-el-Sheik.
The Obama administration has been pushing for a speedy resumption of face-to-face negotiations that broke down in December 2008. US special Mideast envoy George Mitchell has been shuttling between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas for months in a bid to get them to agree.
