US working for Israeli-Palestinian talks to continue

WASHINGTON - The US is trying to find a “formula” that allows direct negotiations between Israel and Palestine to continue, a State Department spokesman has said.

“We are offering our thoughts to be able to move the process toward a final agreement within the next 11 months,” Xinhua quoted Philip Crowley as saying Tuesday.

“It is not our intention to confront this issue every few weeks. We want to make the political commitment to stay in the negotiations for the long haul, so we can get into greater detail on the core status issues.”

Crowley was commenting on the issue of the Jewish settlement building in the West Bank, which has plunged the Israel-Palestine direct talks into stalemate.

Leaders of the Arab League last Friday gave Washington a month to save the talks relaunched in early September in Washington.

“We want to see the direct negotiations continue with enough room for us to move from where we are toward a successful negotiation that resolves the core issues,” Crowley told reporters.

“We want to create a clean path that allows the parties to begin the arduous process of addressing the core issues one by one with the intention of reaching a successful negotiation within a year’s time,” he added.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday that if the Palestinians agree to recognise Israel as the Jewish state, he could extend the settlement construction freeze that ended Sep 26, as demanded by the Palestinians as a precondition for further talks.

The offer was immediately rejected by the Palestinian side as a protection to the rights of the refugees and the right of the Palestinians who live in Israel.