AMMAN: An agreement has been reached between the Israelis and Palestinians for the basis to resume Middle East peace talks, US Secretary of State John Kerry has announced.
“I’m pleased to announce that we’ve reached an agreement that establishes a basis for resuming final status negotiations between the Palestinians and the Israelis,” Kerry told reporters on Friday in Amman, Jordan.
“This is a significant and welcome step forward. The agreement is still in the process of being finalised so we are absolutely not going to talk about any of the elements now.”
Kerry also said that Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat and his Israeli counterpart Tzipi Livni would meet him in Washington “to begin initial talks within the next week or so”.
The announcement came at the end of four days of intense diplomacy by the secretary of state as he consulted Israeli and Palestinian leaders from his base in the Jordanian capital.
Talks between the Israelis and Palestinians have been frozen for three years, after Israel refused to agree to a new suspension of settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank.
