CAIRO: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Monday he was open to peace negotiations with Israel, but that as agreed with Egypt talks could only resume when Jewish settlement activity ends. There is no objection to returning to the negotiating table or holding any meetings in principle, Abbas told reporters in Sharm El-Sheikh after talks with President Hosni Mubarak. We have said, and we will continue to say, that when there is a halt of settlement activity and recognized terms of reference, we are ready to resume negotiations, Abbas said. He said Egypt agreed with his views, contradicting reports in Israel s Maariv newspaper which said Mubarak was to press Abbas to accept a US peace plan to restart the talks immediately. President Mubarak has stressed that [the status of] Jerusalem be included in the negotiations, that settlement activity must end and there must be clear terms of reference, Abbas said. In Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told members of his Likud party that the time was ripe for resuming the peace process. Since the formation of this government, I have called for restarting negotiations with the Palestinians without preconditions, he told the Likud members in parliament on Monday. I believe the negotiations about entering negotiations have held us up long enough. In recent weeks I got the impression that there is something of a change in the air. I hope there is a ripening that will allow the peace process to start, Netanyahu said. Abbas arrived on Sunday and met with Egypt s intelligence chief Omar Suleiman before heading to Sharm El-Sheikh. He will later travel to Qatar, Kuwait and Turkey. His visit to Egypt comes almost a week after Netanyahu met Mubarak in Cairo about the stalled peace process and as diplomats said Washington was drafting letters of guarantee for the peace talks. Meanwhile Jordan s King Abdullah II also arrived Monday in Sharm El-Sheikh where he held talks with Mubarak, the Egyptian news agency MENA said. According to a statement from the royal palace in Amman, the discussions will center on efforts to start serious and effective peace talks between the Israelis and Palestinians. Earlier, the Israeli paper Maariv said Washington is pushing a plan to restart Israeli-Palestinian peace talks that foresees reaching a final deal in two years. Under the plan, the Israelis and Palestinians will immediately start final status talks that were suspended during the Gaza war a year ago and Mubarak would press Abbas to agree to the deal, Maariv said. US President Barack Obama has repeatedly called on the two sides to resume peace talks, but the Palestinians have demanded Israel first freeze all settlement activity and commit to a framework for the talks, to include that the borders of a future Palestinian state encompass all of their land Israel occupied in 1967. The Palestinians have insisted that mostly Arab east Jerusalem - occupied by Israel in 1967 and later annexed in a move not recognized by the international community - be the capital of their future state. Abbas suspended peace talks with Israel after it entered a 22-day war with Hamas, the Islamist rulers of Gaza, that killed more than 1,300 Palestinians and left swathes of Gaza devastated. Thirteen Israelis were killed. Hamas s takeover of Gaza in 2007, which shrank Abbas' powerbase to the West Bank, left a deep rift between Palestinians that have also hampered peace talks with Israel. Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit and Suleiman are meanwhile planning to visit Washington on Jan. 8 for talks with officials there.
