JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged Israeli settlers to act with restraint after a limited construction moratorium expires on Sunday, a plea that appeared aimed at keeping Middle East peace talks alive.
A Palestinian labourer works at a construction site in the West Bank Jewish settlement of Yakir south of Nablus September 26, 2010. (REUTERS/Nir Elias)
Netanyahu has resisted U.S. pressure to extend the 10-month limited freeze on housing starts in settlements in the occupied West Bank despite Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's threats to quit the negotiations launched on Sept. 2 in Washington.
But he has said he could limit the scope of renewed construction, a message he seemed to underscore in an official statement issued only hours before settlers were due to hold a cornerstone-laying ceremony to mark the end of the moratorium.
"The prime minister calls on the residents in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) and the political parties to show restraint and responsibility today and in the future exactly as they showed restraint and responsibility throughout the months of the freeze," it said.
The moratorium officially expires at midnight (2200 GMT), and the United States held extensive discussions with Israeli and Palestinian officials over the weekend to try to prevent the collapse of the negotiations.
"The American efforts are continuing. So far, there is no breakthrough," Nabil Abu Rdainah, a spokesman for Abbas, told Reuters by telephone from Paris, where the Palestinian leader was to meet on Monday with French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak said there was more than an even chance the peace process would continue. Washington has said it hopes all major issues in the peace talks can be resolved within a year.
Abbas, whom Netanyahu has publicly urged to remain in the negotiations, also appeared to indicate the talks would not be suspended immediately upon the moratorium's expiration.
ARAB LEAGUE
Asked in an interview with the pan-Arab newspaper al-Hayat whether he would declare an end to the negotiations if the freeze did not continue, Abbas said: "No, we will go back to the Palestinian institutions, to the Arab follow-up committee."
He was referring to an Arab League forum that gave him the go-ahead to pursue direct peace talks with Israel.
Abu Rdainah said Abbas had requested a meeting of the follow-up committee in Cairo and it would likely convene "within days".
The al-Hayat interview, published on Sunday, was conducted on Friday. Abbas and Palestinian officials with him, due in France for an official visit on Sunday, were not immediately available for comment.
U.S. President Barack Obama has urged Israel to continue the freeze, but Netanyahu, whose coalition is packed with pro-settler parties, could face the collapse of his government if he complies.
State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said Washington was "doing everything we can to keep the parties in the direct talks". He said U.S. special envoy on the Middle East, George Mitchell, met Abbas for 30 minutes on Saturday.
"I think that the chance of achieving a mutually agreed understanding about (a) moratorium is 50-50," Barak said in a BBC interview in New York, where he met U.S. officials. "I think that the chances of having a peace process is much higher."
More than 430,000 Jews live in well over 100 settlements established across the West Bank and East Jerusalem on land that Israel captured from Jordan in a 1967 Middle East war.
The World Court deems settlements illegal, although Israel disputes this.
Palestinians say they will make it impossible for them to create a viable state and the issue is one of the core problems standing in the way of any peace deal.
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