By NNN-KUNA,
Ramallah : Israel has denied that it will hold talks with the Palestinian side next month in Washington.
“Not true,” said Israel’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Ari Mickey Sunday, in response to the recent statement by Ahmad Qurei, head of the Palestinian negotiating team, to the Palestinian newspaper Al-Ayyam that his team had received an invitation to visit the United States next month to meet with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to assess the course of negotiations between the Israeli and the Palestinian sides.
Qurei told the newspaper that he had also received an invitation to join, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York next September and again in November, to meet US officials to discuss how to further the peace process.
The head of the Palestinian negotiating team indicated Saturday that his contacts with Israeli Prime Minister Tzipi Livni were proceeding regularly, though he regretted that the Israeli side was not committed to its obligations as stipulated in the roadmap to the peace plan.