Quartet envoys to meet again with Israelis, Palestinians

Envoys from the Quartet peace mediators are scheduled to have separate meetings again next Monday in Jerusalem with the Israelis and the Palestinians, the U. S. State Department said on Tuesday. "Set of meetings has now been scheduled for Nov. 14 in Jerusalem. We expect these will again be Quartet envoy meetings with the parties separately," department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters. She said that one day before the meetings start, U.S. special envoy David Hale will meet Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah, as well as Israeli negotiator Yitzhak Molcho. "The objective, obviously, will be to try to work with each of these parties, along the lines that we've been talking about, as outlined in the Sept. 23 Quartet statement, to encourage them and offer support to them and assistance to them in coming up proposals for each other on land and on security, which we would hope could be exchanged within 90 days from the end of October," she said at a regular news briefing. "So that's still our goal, also to try to help them work through some of the issues that have been difficult in the last couple of weeks," she added. The Quartet, which groups the U.S., the European Union, the United Nations and Russia, has been pressing the Israelis and the Palestinians to resume direct negotiations since Sept. 23, when the Palestinians applied for full membership at the UN Security Council. The group intends the parties to present comprehensive proposals within three months on territory and security, make substantial progress within six months, and reach an overall agreement by the end of 2012. Its envoys met separately with the parties on Oct. 26 in Jerusalem but failed to make any breakthrough. In late October, the Palestinian National Authority was admitted to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization as a full member, prompting the U.S. and Israel to move respectively to halt financial contributions to the organization and speed up housing construction in Jerusalem and the West Bank. "We've had a cycle of action and reaction that we thought was counterproductive and difficult, so (we want) to try to improve the atmosphere," Nuland said. "Primarily, we want to get these parties back to focusing on the Quartet proposal for how they can move forward to narrow the gaps between them and not focused on other issues that can do damage to the environment for peace," she added. The Palestinians said that they will not return to talks with Israel unless settlement building is halted in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.