Palestine peace talks to re-open

Israeli and Palestinian negotiators announced jointly yesterday that Israel-Palestinian peace talks, stalled since March, would resume in the next few days.

The announcement follows visits by both Palestinians and Israeli officials to Washington in recent days to work out a formula for resuming talks. Both sides have said they expect United States envoy Dennis Ross to return to the region within the next two weeks.

Yesterday afternoon, Israeli foreign minister David Levy met Palestinian planning minister Nabil Shaath in Jerusalem, and afterward announced that bilateral committees would resume work on resolving outstanding issues from the peace agreements between the two sides. "We are deciding to return to the talks ... out of a desire to restore mutual trust," Mr Levy said.

Talks broke down in March when Israel began construction of a housing project for Jews at Har Homa, in an area of Jerusa-lem claimed by the Palestinians, setting off weeks of rioting in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Although there was no indication of what might have been agreed, Palestinians had demanded a halt to Israeli settlement expansion and Israel had insisted upon resumption of security co-operation. According to published reports, the tradeoff would be that Israel would freeze settlement building while the Palestinians would accept the postponement of Israeli withdrawals from the West Bank.

The timing of the announcement may also have been affected by pressure building over an announcement by Jerusalem's mayor last week that a new Jewish housing project would be built in an Arab neighbourhood in the heart of east Jerusalem. Mr Netanyahu said he opposed building the politically sensitive project, and assured the Palestinians that it would not go forward.