THE Palestinians have asked the Obama administration to clarify a US envoy's proposal to restart long-stalled peace talks with Israel indirectly by shuttling between the two sides, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said yesterday. The talks collapsed a year ago during Israel's war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Efforts by President Barack Obama since then to revive them have failed in large part over the issue of Israel's settlement construction in areas the Palestinians want for a future state. President Hosni Mubarak, whose country has also served as an intermediary between Israel and the Palestinians, held talks in Cairo yesterday with Abbas over the new US plan. "We have asked the American side some questions ... and the answers will be discussed within a joint Arab framework and then we will announce our position," Abbas said. The Palestinian leader said in a meeting with Egyptian editors-in-chief Friday night that he was optimistic the United States could push the sides back to talks. First, though, he wants clear guidelines on the offer by US envoy George Mitchell to conduct shuttle diplomacy. "Egypt's role in mediating Palestinian reconciliation talks is credited and could not be replaced," Abbas said, stressing that he faced ‘pressure and threats' (presumably from Israel) not to sign an Egyptian-proposed reconciliation document with rival Palestinian faction Hamas. Mubarak yesterday received separate phone calls from US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Italian Prrime Minister Berlusconi, reported the official Middle East News Agency (MENA). Peace talks that began in November 2007 under former President George W. Bush broke off in December 2008 with Israel's attack on Gaza, which is ruled by Abbas' rivals in the Islamic activist Hamas movement. "I'm optimistic that the American administration is capable of doing something to bring about a breakthrough in the peace process," Abbas said Friday. He made it clear, however, that the Palestinians were not willing to offer more compromises to get the process moving again. The Palestinians insist first on a full freeze of Israeli settlement building in the West Bank. They rejected a partial 10-month freeze imposed in late November as insufficient because it does not include East Jerusalem, where Palestinians hope to establish a capital. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a conference Wednesday that he had reason to believe the talks could resume in a matter of weeks, though he gave no details. Abbas said he supported the building of the controversial barrier, which seeksto stem smuggling through a network of underground tunnels linking Egypt to Gaza. “The steel wall does not seek to starve the Palestinian people... the tunnels are used to smuggle whisky, drugs and Mercedes cars,” Abbas said in the interview published in the daily Al Ahram. "As for the humanitarian goods, thousands of tonnes enter (Gaza) through the border points," Abbas added. The tunnels are mainly used for food, fuel and household appliances, Hamas also uses them to import weapons into the territory and send fighters abroad for training.
