CAIRO - The Palestinian Authority will not return to peace talks with Israel unless there is a freeze on settlement building that includes East Jerusalem, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said in Cairo Sunday. Abbas added that the Palestinians and Israel had received no official US 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. The Palestinian President was speaking to reporters after talks in Cairo with President Hosni Mubarak. 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." In his remark, Abbas may have alluded to a report claiming Israel conditioned its willingness to extend the moratorium on West Bank settlement building by excluding East Jerusalem from such a freeze. Israel and the United States have been engaged in what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called "intensive" talks over Israel's demand to receive written guarantees in exchange for a new 90-day West Bank settlement freeze. Also alluding to Israel's alleged demand to exclude East Jerusalem from a planned settlement freeze extension, Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat told the Qatari TV Al-Jazeera TV last week that such a future Palestinian state would have no meaning without East Jerusalem as its capital. If Israel does not halt construction there as well as in the settlements, he said, the Palestinians will seek statehood from the United Nations. Another contentious clause in the deal being negotiated between Israel and the United States has been the alleged US offer to provide Israel with 20 F-35 stealth warplanes worth $3 billion as part of a settlement freeze deal. Israel calls East Jerusalem part of its capital - a status not recognised abroad - and Palestinians want it as the capital of a Palestinian state. "For the past year we are seeing a phenomenon of refusal by Abu Mazen (Abbas) to commit to direct talks and we see him making various excuses in order not to (talk)," Israeli national security adviser Uzi Arad told Israeli television on Saturday. He said contacts with the United States on the proposed incentives were continuing, including over the F-35s. "But what was important was that the prime minister has insisted that ... it is a last freeze, there will not be another freeze. There will not be any more American requests for more freezes or other limitations," Arad said.
