By Xinhua,
Ramallah : Palestinian, Israeli and American officials will hold a three-way meeting on June 16 to evaluate Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, a Palestinian official said on Monday.
“The Israeli-Palestinian negotiation process and its consequences will be reviewed at the meeting which will take place on June 16,” Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat told Voice of Palestine radio.
“The meeting is to make the negotiations more serious, to settle them and to let the U.S. administration know that the peace process can solve everything,” he added.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her Assistant for Near Eastern Affairs David Welch will attend the meeting, which is probably to be held in Jerusalem.
Erekat and chief negotiator Ahmed Qurei will join the meeting as the Palestinian side while Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livniand one of her aides will represent Israel.
Ahead of the three-way meeting, Rice is to meet Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah. “The discussions with Rice will stress that Israel must commit itself to the Road Map obligations, mainly the complete halting of all settlement activities, including the natural growth of the settlement blocs,” Erekat said.
Erekat denied that Rice’s visit is intended to put pressure on Abbas to prevent him from holding talks with Islamic Hamas movement which ousted Abbas’ Fatah movement and took over the Gaza Strip by force one year ago.
The U.S. mediated the resumption of the peace process last November. However, Israel’s settlement expansion in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, where the Palestinians recognize as a part of their future statehood, blocked any progress on the peace talks.