Abbas rejects settlement freeze excluding Jerusalem

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas said on Sunday that he would not return to the negotiating table with Israel without a settlement freeze that included annexed Arab east Jerusalem.

Asked if the Palestinian Authority would agree to resume the talks if a new settlement freeze did not include East Jerusalem, he said: "Of course ... if there is no complete halt to settlements in all of the Palestinian territories including Jerusalem, we will not accept". He was speaking to reporters after meeting Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo.

Israel must "put a halt to settlement activity in all of the Palestinian territories," he added.

In talks last week, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton put together a package of incentives to get Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to accept a fresh 90-day moratorium on new settlement building in a bid to get stalled peace talks with the Palestinians back on track.

Netanyahu worked out the contours of a deal during a trip to the U.S. but he has not been able to win approval from his decision-making inner Cabinet.

However the U.S. proposal does not include east Jerusalem and Netanyahu has baulked at bringing the deal to his security cabinet until he receives the U.S. pledges in writing.

Abbas said the Palestinians and Israel had received no official U.S. request to return to the talks, which began in September but stopped three weeks later after Israel refused to extend a freeze on new settlements in the West Bank.

State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said on Friday that Washington was ready to provide the "understandings in writing."

David Hale, assistant to U.S. Middle East envoy George Mitchell, briefed Abbas on details of the plan at a meeting in the West Bank town of Ramallah last week.

Direct peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians resumed on September 2 but collapsed three weeks later with the expiry of a 10-
month Israeli freeze on settlement building in the occupied West Bank.

The Palestinian leader has refused to rejoin the talks until a new moratorium is imposed.