JERUSALEM/PARIS: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas held back on Monday from acting on a threat to quit peace negotiations, leaving more time for diplomacy to save talks after Israel's freeze on new settlement building expired.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy said after talks with Abbas in Paris that the Palestinian leader and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had accepted his invitation to peace talks before the end of October which Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has also been asked to attend.
Earth-moving equipment began work in at least three settlements in the occupied West Bank but there was little sign, during a Jewish holiday, of widescale resumption of construction following the 10-month moratorium's midnight expiration.
"It's all symbolic for now," Israeli Housing Minister Ariel Atias told the YNet news website, questioning whether Defense Minister Ehud Barak, whose ministry oversees Israeli activities in the West Bank, would agree to issue new building permits.
A window of at least one week was open for US diplomatic efforts to avert what would be a major embarrassment for President Barack Obama -- the collapse of a peace process launched at the White House nearly four weeks ago.
Abbas, who had threatened to abandon the negotiations if settlement building was revived, said he would withhold his decision until after an Arab League forum met on Oct. 4 and consultations with a Palestine Liberation Organization council.
"We will not have swift reactions now, to say 'yes or 'no -- we want, or we don't want'," Abbas told a news conference with Sarkozy.
"Israel has a moratorium for 10 months and it should be extended for three to four months more to give peace a chance," Abbas said.
The French leader for his part said "the settlements must stop.”
Palestinians fear settlements, built on land Israel captured from Jordan in a 1967 war, will deny them the viable state they hope to create in the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip, an enclave run by Hamas Islamists opposed to Abbas's peace efforts.
"I am certain we will still achieve (a peace settlement) and eventually the Palestinian state will be achieved," Abbas said in Paris. "Most Israelis want peace and know that without it Israelis cannot live."
In Washington, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said US policy on settlement construction had not changed. "We remain in close touch with both parties and will be meeting with them again in the coming days," he said in a statement.
Nabil Abu Rudainah, an Abbas spokesman, told Voice of Palestine Radio: "We are waiting to hear the American position or to hear the latest from the Americans on the Israeli position. Until this moment, we are still waiting."
Netanyahu imposed the freeze on housing starts in the West Bank settlements in November under pressure from Obama to help coax Abbas back into direct talks after a 20-month hiatus.
