US President Barack Obama's envoy to the Middle East tried today to persuade Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to drop his preconditions for negotiating with Israel, according to dpa. Envoy George Mitchell also reassured Abbas that Obama remained "fully" committed to a Middle East peace solution. He spoke a day after the US president said in an interview with Time Magazine that he had "overestimated" his administration's ability to persuade Israelis and Palestinians to make concessions. Israeli-Palestinian negotiations were broken off more than one year ago, as Israel headed into new elections that saw the hardline Likud party return to power. Mitchell's attempts to push them back to the negotiating table over the past year have thus far been unsuccessful. Abbas is demanding a full freeze of Israeli construction in both the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem before negotiations can resume. Netanyahu has offered a partial freeze of 10 months in the West Bank only, excluding East Jerusalem. The envoy met for two-and-a-half hours with Abbas in Ramallah Friday, making the short motor journey to the central West Bank city from Jerusalem, where he had held talks with Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, on Thursday. "Mitchell conveyed a message from President Obama to President Abbas reiterating a full commitment to a peace solution," Saeb Erekat, a top aide to Abbas, told reporters after the meeting. Erekat said Mitchell urged Abbas to first return to the negotiating table, and only then would the Americans be able to help the Palestinians achieve their goal of independence. But he accused Netanyahu of obstructing the efforts to revive the negotiations. "They told us that if you return to negotiations, we will help you achieve your goal," said the chief Palestinian negotiator. Erekat said Mitchell had brought no "letters of assurances" to the Palestinians, but added "we do not need these American letters because Israel is the occupying power, not America." US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton had hinted earlier this month that persuading the Palestinians to return to the negotiating table could require "guarantees" to them from the US and the rest of the international community.
