JERUSALEM - The United States has asked Israel to freeze West Bank settlement for a year to prod Arab countries to take steps towards normalising relations with the Jewish state, an Israeli newspaper said on Thursday.
- Defence Minister Ehud Barak, in interviews with Israeli radio stations, said “an attempt to reach understandings” with Washington over a suspension of construction in settlements, but he did not directly comment on the report in the Haaretz daily.
- “All this is in the context of a broad plan for a comprehensive regional agreement that is apparently shaping up as a possible initiative by President (Barack) Obama with the main focus on the Palestinians and a door kept open, after a certain delay, for Syria and Lebanon,” Barak told Israel Radio.
- The newspaper said a proposal for a one-year settlement freeze in the occupied West Bank was raised by Obama’s special envoy, George Mitchell, during talks in Jerusalem last week with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
- White House spokesman Robert Gibbs would not comment directly on the report but confirmed the United States was continuing to seek an Israeli hiatus in settlement expansion.
- “Without getting into any specifics, the president’s been clear in outlining the steps he believes the Israelis, Palestinians and Arab states should take in order to achieve a lasting Middle East peace — and that includes a freeze on settlements,” Gibbs told reporters in Washington.
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