Ashton to call Abbas and Netanyahu to restart peace talks

EU Foreign Policy chief Catherine Ashton said she will call Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu later Monday to try to set a date for a restart of stalled peace talks. Speaking at the close of talks between European Union foreign ministers, Ashton said she would call "to invite them to meet in the coming days." Ashton spoke a day after chairing a meeting in Brussels of envoys of the so-called Quartet of Middle East peace-brokers - the European Union, Russia, the United Nations and the United States. On Sunday she issued a statement saying "we discussed what to do next to encourage our Israeli and Palestinian partners to resume substantive negotiations as soon as possible." The Quartet tried unsuccessfully to kick start talks between the two sides at a meeting in New York in September.