PLO urges Abbas to quit peace talks

Influential Palestinian leaders urge President Abbas to quit direct talks with Israel, owing to settlement construction. - Al Jazeera

The Palestinians want Israel to extend construction freeze in the occupied territory which expired last Sunday [AFP]

An influential Palestinian body has urged the Palestinian president to quit direct talks with Israel, saying there should be no further peace talks as long as Israel continued settlement construction in the occupied territories.

Reading from a statement on Saturday, Yasser Abed Rabbo, secretary-general of the Palestine Liberation Organisation's executive committee, said Israel's failure to extend a 10-month partial freeze in settlement construction in the West Bank has made the negotiations "devoid of any meaning".

The Israeli government bore "full responsibility for the current impasse in the peace process" and "the collapse of negotiations," Rabbo continued.

The PLO statement, which comes just days before an Arab League committee meets on the issue, exerts more pressure on the Palestinian president to disengage from the direct talks - a decision he said he would make after the Arab League consultations.

Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, has repeatedly threatened to walk out of the US-sponsored talks if the moratorium is not extended. The direct talks were relaunched a month ago with a declared goal of a two state solution within a year.......

Abbas has said he would not make a final decision on the talks until after meeting Arab foreign ministers in Libya on Friday, giving US mediators another few days to try to strike a compromise.