U.S. calls Israeli settlement building "a problem"
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States called Israeli settlement building "a problem" on Tuesday as U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice began fresh talks in her uphill push for an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal this year.
The State Department voiced displeasure at Israel's latest plans to build new Jewish settlements after Rice met Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak for wide-ranging discussions that also covered Iran and its suspected pursuit of nuclear arms.
Rice later sat down with Ahmed Qurei, the chief Palestinian peace negotiator, ahead of three-way talks with him and Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, who leads the Israeli negotiating team, on Wednesday afternoon.
Negotiations have so far produced no tangible progress and there is deep skepticism among Israelis, Palestinians and analysts that U.S. President George W. Bush can meet his goal of reaching a comprehensive peace agreement this year.
Rice said she would work as hard as possible to help the two sides strike a deal this year but said "nobody should underestimate the difficulty of doing that."
"The Middle East is not going to get better without the creation of a Palestinian state to live side by side with Israel in peace, security and democracy," she added at a news conference with Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini.
"So the question is if not now, when?" she added.
TWO TRACKS ON IRAN
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Rice would strive for a deal this year but, in what seemed an effort to manage expectations, warned of the risks of pushing to hard and said "we'll see how far we get."
The last peace talks under U.S. President Bill Clinton collapsed in 2000, triggering a bloody Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation that the Bush administration clearly does not wish repeated.
In addition to seeking a peace deal, Rice is trying to hold Israel and the Palestinians to the 2003 "road map" plan in which Israel agreed to halt all settlement activity and the Palestinians to crack down on violence against Israelis.
An Israeli Defense Ministry committee has approved building 20 housing units in Maskiot, an abandoned military base in the Jordan Valley that is outside the major West Bank settlement blocs that Israel plans to keep under any peace deal.
Qurei described the plan as a sign of Israeli bad faith.
"It's a real violation," Qurei told reporters after meeting Rice. "It is unfortunately a very bad message about (their) intention of reaching an agreement. It's a bad message."
Barak said Israel regarded the construction as justified, but noted that committee's approval was a procedural step and that the project was at an early stage.
Barak, who also met U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates during his visit, said he told U.S. officials that Israel views Iran as "a major threat to the stability of the whole world and to any conceivable world order."
Iran denies that it is seeking to produce nuclear weapons and says that its atomic program is to generate electricity so that it can export more of its valuable oil and gas.
The perception that the risk of armed confrontation with Iran over its nuclear program has grown steadily this year and drove oil prices to record highs earlier this month.
After meeting Iran's chief negotiator in Geneva on July 19, officials from major powers gave Tehran two weeks to reply to an offer of a halt on fresh U.N. sanctions if Iran froze the expansion of its nuclear program.
That would give Iran until Saturday to reply.
The West has pursued a two-track strategy toward Iran, offering economic and trade incentives for it to halt sensitive nuclear work on the one hand while passing three U.N. Security Council sanctions resolutions against Iran on the other.
"If one track is not working, then we're going to have to go to the other," Rice said, alluding to further sanctions.
(Additional reporting by Dan Williams and Susan Cornwell; Editing by Sandra Maler)
