Abbas says settlements block Mideast peace deal

settlements,” Abbas said in his address to the UN General

Assembly’s annual ministerial meeting on Saturday.

Direct peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians

stalled only three weeks after starting in Washington in early

September over the impending end of a 10-month freeze on new

Israeli settlement construction on land claimed by the

Palestinians.

Abbas reaffirmed the Palestinian commitment to try to

reach a peace deal.

“We have decided to enter into final status negotiations.

We will continue to exert every effort to reach an agreement

for Palestinian-Israeli peace within one year in accordance

with resolutions of international legitimacy … and the

vision of the two-state solution,” Abbas told ministers and

diplomats.

But with a Sunday deadline looming for Israel to resume

the contested building,the Palestinians are waiting for US

efforts to break the impasse.

President Barack Obama has increasingly placed efforts to

resolve the conflict at the centre of his foreign policy,

but both Israeli and Palestinian officials said Saturday a

deal was far from certain.

State Department spokesman P J Crowley said U S special

Mideast peace envoy George Mitchell met with Abbas for about

half an hour on Saturday.

“We remain engaged with both sides,” he said.

Earlier,Crowley said,”We are doing everything we can to

keep the parties in direct talks.”

In his UN speech,Abbas said,”Our demands for the

cessation of settlement activities,the lifting of the siege

(of Gaza) and an end to all other illegal Israel policies and

practices do not constitute arbitrary preconditions in the

peace process.”

These are past obligations that Israel is required to

implement,he said,and Israel’s implementation “will lead to

the creation of the necessary environment for the success of

the negotiations.”