Yasser Abed Rabbo, secretary-general of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s (PLO) executive committee, said that the Palestinian leadership “doesn’t know that they have stopped.”

Abed Rabbo told the Voice of Palestine radio that George Mitchell, the US envoy who leads the talks, “is coming next week to us, the context and the core of the negotiations are more important to us than the way they are being held.”

The London-based Arab newspaper Al-Hayat reported on Sunday that Mitchell had stopped the proximities two months after they started and is pressuring the two sides to shift to direct negotiations that had stalled since Israel launched a three-week offensive in Gaza in late 2008.

The PLO official said that “even if they stopped, they have achieved nothing, keep it going or halting it is no longer important.”

The US, which failed to bring the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Israel to direct talks, proposed in May four-month proximity talks to bridge the gaps between them and agree on the outlines of the permanent status issues. The Arab League approved the US proposal.

The Palestinians said they would go for four months in the talks, hoping to reach an agreement on border and security issues.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Saturday that moving to the direct negotiations with Israel without making a progress in the proximity talks will be “absurd and useless.”

Abbas said that “if there is no progress in the proximity talks, what would be the benefits of moving to the direct talks?”

“The direct talks will be then absurd and useless, therefore, we had informed all the international parties that we want to first achieve progress,” said Abbas. “These are our ideas and we wait to hear from the Israeli side.”

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he is planning to ask for Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s help in moving to direct peace talks with the PA.

Netanyahu said at the opening of the weekly Cabinet meeting that he planned to meet Mubarak in Egypt on Tuesday to discuss ways in which progress in negotiations can be achieved.

Israeli officials said that Netanyahu will brief Mubarak about his talks with Obama in Washington and about the changes in Israel’s policy regarding the blockade of Gaza.

Obama on Friday phoned Abbas and urged him to change his mind about holding direct talks with Israel, Palestinian officials said. According to the official, the PA has refused to begin direct talks with Israel unless progress is first achieved on two major core issues during the current proximity talks.