Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said he'll resume direct peace talks if Israel accepts its 1967 frontier as a baseline for the borders of a Palestinian state and agrees to the deployment of an international force there, AP reported. Abbas is under growing pressure from the United States to resume negotiations, and met Saturday with President Barack Obama's Mideast envoy, George Mitchell. Abbas' latest comments, published Saturday in the Jordanian newspaper Al-Ghad, hinted at some flexibility. The Palestinian leader did not mention a comprehensive Israeli settlement freeze as a condition for negotiations _ something he has underlined as crucial in the past. However, it seemed unlikely Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would meet Abbas' demands. Netanyahu has refused to be pinned down on a framework for negotiations, insisting on talks without conditions. The Palestinians are wary of entering talks with the hardline Netanyahu, after 17 years of intermittent talks with a succession of Israeli leaders failed to bring them any closer to statehood. The Palestinians want to establish their state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem, territories Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast War. Netanyahu has not said how much occupied territory he is willing to relinquish for a Palestinian state. However, he has said he will not give up control of Jerusalem and has insisted on a continued Israeli troop presence on the eastern border of a future Palestinian state. Negotiations between Abbas and Netanyahu's predecessor, Ehud Olmert, broke off in December 2008, on the eve of Israel's military offensive in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip. Abbas has said that in these negotiations, he and Olmert reached an agreement in principle on security arrangements, including the deployment of an international force in the future Palestinian state. The two leaders also discussed a possible land swap that would allow Israel to annex some Jewish settlements on war-captured lands, and compensate the Palestinians with an equal amount of Israeli land. The two sides disagreed on the amount of land to be swapped. -- SPA
