Netanyahu, Fayyad to meet April 17 in Jerusalem

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will meet his Palestinian counterpart Salam Fayyad in Jerusalem on April 17, a spokesman from the Israeli leader’s office told AFP. It will be the first top-level meeting between the two sides since the peace process ground to a halt more than 18 months ago in a bitter dispute over Jewish settlement building. Officials close to Fayyad and Netanyahu said they were not aware the two men had ever formally met before. A Palestinian official had on Tuesday said the two men would meet on April 17, and on Wednesday, Netanyahu’s spokesman Ofir Gendelman confirmed the date. “The meeting will take place in Jerusalem, probably at the prime minister’s office,” he told AFP. Officials on both sides had previously confirmed the two were to meet after Passover, which ends at sundown on Friday, but had not named a date or a venue. Fayyad is expected to use the rare meeting to personally deliver a letter from Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas in which he lays out his conditions for returning to direct negotiations that have been on hold since late September 2010. In the letter, Abbas was expected to say the Palestinians would only return to negotiations if Israel agreed to halt settlement construction and to accept clear parameters for discussions of future borders. The Palestinian premier will be accompanied by negotiator Saeb Erakat and Yasser Abed Rabbo, secretary-general of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO). Last week, Erakat and Netanyahu’s envoy Yitzhak Molcho met to discus the letter in what was the first time the two sides had met since January when they held five rounds of exploratory talks in a bid to seek ways of reviving direct negotiations. But the meetings, which were sponsored by the Middle East peacemaking Quartet, ended without any agreement to continue talking. Top Quartet diplomats were to meet in Washington later on Wednesday to discuss ways of helping the two sides resume peace talks, which broke down just weeks after they were restarted in September 2010 in a thorny dispute over settlements. The high-level meeting will be attended by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. The meeting was expected to end at around 1600 GMT, after which the Quartet was to issue a statement, state department officials said on Tuesday. Meanwhile, Netanyahu’s office has said he will respond with his own letter to Abbas, which is likely to call for a resumption of direct negotiations without preconditions.