Cairo, December 29: Hardline Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in Egypt to discuss efforts to revive the stalled Middle East peace process Tuesday with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, but Cairo said talks can only start when illegal Jewish settlement activity stops.
“The talks were very positive,” Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit told reporters after the meeting.
“We have seen that the Israeli prime minister wants to move ahead (with negotiations), and he insists on moving ahead, but we insist on an agreed platform,” Abul Gheit said.
“There are conditions… we will not negotiate while settlement continues,” he said.
Egypt also wants to see a defined time frame for the talks.
“Any negotiation, for which a basis and a goal is agreed, must have a time-frame,” Abul Gheit said.
The two leaders also discussed a prisoner swap between Israel and the Palestinians that would see the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in exchange for Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier captured by Gaza resistance three and half years ago.
Abul Gheit said the deal was still “suspended” and that a Hamas delegation currently in Syria, was to head back to Cairo for talks with officials on the issue.
The encounter, however, was overshadowed by Israel’s announcement it has invited tenders for the construction of hundreds of new homes for illegal Jewish settlers in Israeli-occupied Palestinian East Jerusalem, which has been under illegal Israeli occupation since 1967.
Abul Gheit told the official MENA news agency before the meeting that continued illegal settlement construction by Israel in the occupied territories was “torpedoing the efforts being made to relaunch negotiations aimed at establishing a Palestinian state.”
“Such behaviour raises questions about the serious willingness of Israel to reach a definitive agreement and leads one to believe that Israel is trying to welch on its obligations for a just and lasting peace,” he said.
Israel has invited tenders for the building of 692 new homes in the illegal occupied Jerusalem settlements of Neve Yaacov, Pisgat Zeev and Har Homa, the independent Channel 10 television reported on Sunday.
The announcement prompted key ally the United States to express its opposition and the European Union to call for a rethink.
Abul Gheit said he and intelligence chief Omar Suleiman were to travel to Washington for talks with officials on January 7.
The visit comes as US President Barack Obama’s administration was said to be drafting letters of guarantee for Israel and the Palestinians to serve as a basis for relaunching the talks which have been stalled for almost a year.
Abul Gheit said Egypt had asked for the written guarantees.
“That is the crux of the Egyptian efforts… (but) it is premature to say whether or not we will receive the assurances of guarantees,” we want, he said.
On Monday, a diplomat said that US special envoy George Mitchell would present draft letters of guarantee to Israel and the Palestinian Authority on his next visit to the region.
“The United States is hoping that the two letters will serve as a basis for the relaunch of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations but we don’t know if they will satisfy the Palestinians, who want a complete freeze of settlement activity before talks resume,” the diplomat said.
Washington was currently in talks with the Palestinians and Egypt — a key US ally in the region — over the letters, another diplomat said.
Egypt had already asked for written US guarantees before peace talks resume, in order to ensure their aim is the establishment of a Palestinian state within 1967 borders.
—Agencies