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Top Aide to Palestinian President Says Path to a Resumption of Mideast Talks Still Blocked
(AP-Washington Post) Nabil Abu Rudeneh, a spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said in a statement Sunday that for actual peace talks to resume, Israel must first accept its pre-1967 war frontier as a baseline and halt settlement building. He said that Abbas agreed to send a delegate to Washington to continue lower-level preliminary talks with an Israeli counterpart about the terms for negotiations. The Washington talks are meant to "overcome the obstacles that still stand in the way of launching negotiations," he said. Palestinians say three issues need to be settled before talks can begin - the baseline for border talks, the extent of a possible Israeli settlement slowdown, and a timetable for releasing long-detained Palestinian prisoners. Israel has been insisting that peace talks resume without preconditions and that all issues should be resolved through dialogue.