A broad international coalition urged Israel today to freeze all settlement activity in the West Bank and lift its blockade of the Gaza Strip, backing U.S. President Barack Obama's Mideast policy, according to AP. The Quartet of Mideast negotiators and foreign ministers of the Group of Eight industrialized nations took advantage of what the U.N. chief said was a «historic» opportunity with the new Obama administration in issuing nearly identical calls for the resumption of direct peace talks, an end to violence, and economic reconstruction for war-battered Gaza. «We are now trying very hard to seize the very favorably created political atmosphere,» of Obama's election to push the peace process forward, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told a news conference. Israel has rejected demands that it halt all settlement building, saying it must accommodate «natural growth» in the Israeli enclaves. However both the G-8 and the Quartet _ the United States, Russia, European Union and United Nations _ urged Israel to freeze all settlement activity, including natural growth, with the quartet also urging it to dismantle settlement outposts erected since March 2001. It was the first Quartet meeting since Obama came to office, held on the sidelines of a meeting of the G-8 foreign ministers in this picturesque Adriatic port on Italy's northeastern coast.
