Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has proposed meetings with Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas every two weeks to improve the prospects of Middle East peace talks, a diplomatic source said today.
Mr Netanyahu, who is set to travel to Washington next week for direct talks, intends "to handle the negotiations personally," the source said.
Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said of Mr Netanyahu's plan: "It is premature to talk about this now."
The proposal had been passed on to Washington, where the two leaders are due to attend a dinner with US president Barack Obama on September 1st.
Mr Abbas and Mr Netanyahu will start negotiations the following day after months of indirect contacts. There remains deep scepticism about whether they can reach a deal.
US secretary of state Hillary Clinton said the United States believed all major issues could be resolved within a year. But Mr Netanyahu's own foreign minister said there was virtually no chance of reaching a deal in that time frame.
The negotiations could stumble as soon as September 26th, when a 10-month limited Israeli moratorium on new housing starts in Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank expires.
Mr Abbas, whose authority has been limited to the West Bank since Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip in 2007, has threatened to pull out of the talks if Israel presses ahead with settlement construction.
The United States opposes settlement expansion but has stopped short of calling for Mr Netanyahu to extend the moratorium, a move that could cause cracks in his governing coalition dominated by pro-settler parties including his own.
Instead, it has urged both Israel and the Palestinians not to take measures that could jeopardise the negotiations and said the settlement issue would be raised in next week's talks.
Under Mr Netanyahu's proposal, he and Mr Abbas would meet once every two weeks to "try to reach quiet understandings on the key issues, and afterwards the two teams will discuss the details", the diplomatic source said.
An Israeli official quoted Mr Netanyahu as saying: "The only serious negotiations in the Middle East are direct negotiations, calm and continuous, between the leaders on the fundamental subjects."
A similar formula was used in peace negotiations between Mr Netanyahu's predecessor, Ehud Olmert, and Mr Abbas, who in a series of meetings talked privately every few weeks. The Olmert-Abbas talks, unveiled at a conference in 2007 that was also in the United States, came close to producing a final deal, both leaders said at the time.
Reuters