CAIRO — Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas said on Monday he was open to peace negotiations with Israel, but that as agreed with Egypt talks could only resume when Jewish settlement activity ends.
"There is no objection to returning to the negotiating table or holding any meetings in principle," Abbas told reporters in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh after talks with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
"We have said, and we will continue to say, that when there is a halt of settlement activity and recognised terms of reference, we are ready to resume negotiations," Abbas said.
He said Egypt agreed with his views, contradicting reports in Israel's Maariv newspaper that Mubarak was to press Abbas to accept a US peace plan to restart the talks immediately.
"President Mubarak has stressed that (the status of) Jerusalem be included in the negotiations, that settlement activity must end and there must be clear terms of reference," Abbas said.
Later at a press conference, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit said Washington would present him and Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman with its position when they visit the United States on January 8.
"The process is prolonged and will need patience, rigour and a thought-out position so that the Palestinians are not placed in a difficult position," the official MENA news agency quoted him as saying.
In Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told members of his Likud party that the time was ripe for resuming the peace process.
"Since the formation of this government, I have called for restarting negotiations with the Palestinians without preconditions," he told the Likud members in parliament on Monday.
"I believe the negotiations about entering negotiations have held us up long enough. In recent weeks I got the impression that there is something of a change in the air. I hope there is a ripening that will allow the peace process to start," Netanyahu said.
Abbas's visit to Egypt comes almost a week after Netanyahu met Mubarak in Cairo about the stalled peace process and as diplomats said Washington was drafting letters of guarantee for the peace talks.
Meanwhile Jordan's King Abdullah II also arrived Monday in Sharm el-Sheikh where he held talks with Mubarak on "efforts to start serious and effective peace talks between the Israelis and Palestinians," according to a statement from the royal palace in Amman.
Earlier the Israeli paper Maariv said Washington is pushing for final status Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, suspended during the Gaza war a year ago, to resume immediately, adding Mubarak would press Abbas to agree to the deal.
A senior Palestinian official denied they had received any such plan.
"We have not received, neither officially nor in any other form, a plan from the American administration to bring about peace in the region," Nimr Hamad, an aide to Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, told AFP.
"Israel is trying with these media leaks to pressure president Abbas to enter into negotiations without a complete halt to settlements across all the Palestinian territories, including Jerusalem."
US President Barack Obama has repeatedly called on the two sides to resume peace talks, but the Palestinians have demanded Israel first freeze all settlement activity and commit to a framework for the talks.
The Palestinians have insisted the borders of their promised state encompass all of their land Israel occupied in 1967, including mostly Arab east Jerusalem -- which Israel later annexed in a move not recognised by the international community -- as their capital.
Hamas's takeover of Gaza in 2007, which shrank Abbas's powerbase to the West Bank and deepened Palestinian divisions, has also hampered peace talks with Israel.
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