OCCUPIED JERUSALEM: Israel never refused to renew a freeze on settlement in the occupied West Bank but the United States stopped pressuring for a new moratorium, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday. Israeli radio and news sites quoted him as telling parliament's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that Washington did initially ask Israel to extend a 10-month building freeze which expired in September. “The truth is that we were prepared to do this but contrary to what was reported Israel did not refuse to extend the freeze,” Maariv daily's “nrg” website quoted Netanyahu as telling MPs. “In the end the United States decided not to take that path, rightly in my opinion,” he added. Israel did not publicly refuse Washington's request and Netanyahu said at the time that he would put it to a cabinet vote if reported US incentives were put in writing, among them finance for advanced warplanes and a promise to veto any UN Security Council resolution against Israel's interests. That letter apparently never came. Peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians have been stalled since September, with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas saying they cannot resume as long as the Israelis are building on land the Palestinians claim for a future state. Abbas has called for the international community, spearheaded by the peacemaking Quartet of the United Nations, the United States, Russia and the European Union, to come up with a new peace plan. “We demand that the Middle East Quartet and the various UN bodies, headed by the Security Council, draft a peace plan which conforms with international law, instead of keeping up negotiations which do not solve the problem,” he said in a televised address last week. Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would visit Egypt on Jan. 6 in an effort to revitalize stalled peace talks with the Palestinians. “On Thursday I shall go to Egypt,” he told senior members of his Likud party in remarks broadcast on Israeli public radio. “We have a single aim, to strengthen security and to move toward achieving peace.” Netanyahu did not elaborate, but Israeli media have reported that he is to meet President Hosni Mubarak at Egypt's Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheikh. Mubarak has publicly blamed Israel for the collapse of peace talks, and has urged the international community, especially the US, to move the process forward.
