Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said he hopes that the peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians will resume under the mediation of the United States in the coming weeks.
"I hope that in the next two weeks we might hold indirect talks. I have an impression that much efforts have been applied to resume them," Barak said.
On Friday U.S. mediator George Mitchell met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem and PNA leaders in Ramallah in a bid to restart the Israeli-Palestinian dialog, which stalled more than a year ago. Settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, both occupied by Israel since the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, has been the main obstacle to reviving peace negotiations.
Israel's decision to build 1,600 new housing units for Jewish families in the disputed territory in East Jerusalem, announced during U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden's visit to Israel, has infuriated the U.S. as it poses a threat to the resumption of U.S.-backed Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
Israel, which receives $2.4 billion of U.S. foreign aid every year, apologized for the bad timing of its announcement but has rejected the demand by the United States to scrap the new construction plans.
Under the internationally agreed roadmap for Middle East peace, Israel is obliged to freeze all settlement construction activity and remove unauthorized outposts built since 2001 from Palestinian territories.
TEL AVIV/GAZA, April 24 (RIA Novosti)
