CAIRO - Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul-Gheit has said that US envoy George Mitchell's approach to the Israeli-Palestinian indirect talks might require 10 years to achieve results, a newspaper reported on Saturday. Mitchell's way of dealing with the conflict 'often achieves success, yet many times it comes after half a decade, or a decade,' Abul-Gheit told the pan-Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat. Washington's peace envoy to the Middle East arrived in the region late Tuesday for another round of low-profile indirect negotiations, begun earlier this year. According to Abul-Gheit, nothing was achieved through the US- brokered 'proximity' talks. "This leaves the Palestinians, Americans and Arabs in an awkward position, and I think that there is a need for urgent action by all parties to force Israel to be credible and deal with the real essence of the conflict," he said. On Friday, the White House insisted that the negotiations were making progress, despite Palestinian complaints that the Israelis were stalling. "These talks have been really quite substantive," Dan Shapiro, senior Middle East director at the National Security Council, said. "We feel that already in the little over a month that these talks have been going on, the gaps have narrowed. And we believe there are opportunities to further narrow those gaps to allow the sides to take that next step to the direct talks," he told reporters at a White House briefing ahead of the visit to Washington of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Mitchell held four rounds of indirect talks between the Israelis and the Palestinians, who gave him four months since the start of the talks April to bridge gaps on the issues of security and the borders of the future Palestinian state. The hope was that if enough progress was made, the sides would move on to direct negotiations.
