German FM tells Israel :

Halt settelments

ISRAEL: An Israeli refusal to halt settlement building would hobble fresh hopes for the Middle East peace process, Germany's foreign minister said on Monday on the first leg of a regional tour.

Frank-Walter Steinmeier said after talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that a new US initiative to press for a two-state solution presented a unique opportunity which the region could not afford to squander.

"Everyone knows: without a stop to settlement building there will be no decisive progress in the peace process," he told reporters.

He said US President Barack Obama's drive to jumpstart stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace talks and to engage with what he called Israel's "difficult" neighbours like Syria and Lebanon had lent "new momentum to the situation".

"But we know time tends to work against us and that is why a sense of urgency is now required," said Steinmeier, who will wrap up his two-day regional tour on Tuesday with talks in Damascus and Beirut.

Steinmeier also met President Shimon Peres and senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat as well as his ultra-nationalist Israeli counterpart Avigdor Lieberman. At a distinctly frosty news conference, Lieberman and Steinmeier acknowledged that "differences on several issues" divided them, particularly on settlements.

Lieberman said the Palestinians were allowing internal divisions between president Mahmud Abbas's Fatah party and the Islamist movement Hamas to stand in the way of progress toward talks with Israel.

Jerusalem, Tuesday, AFP