UN leader presses Mideast talks

Jordan’s King Abdullah (R) meets with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at the Royal Palace in Amman yesterday at the start of the latter’s Middle East peace mission

UN leader Ban Ki-moon was meeting Jordan’s King Abdullah II and senior officials yesterday at the start of a Middle East peace mission to raise pressure on Israel and the Palestinians to resume talks.
The UN secretary general held talks with Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh and Prime Minister Awn Khasawneh, including about informal Israeli-Palestinian talks that Jordan hosted this month, officials said.
“We discussed the peace process and the current impasse that we sought to break recently and how Jordan was pushing for more Israeli-Palestinian talks,” Judeh told a news conference with Ban.
“We are now coordinating with our partners as well as the UN secretary general, within the framework of the Arab League Follow-Up Committee.”
Palestinian and Israeli negotiators held five rounds of exploratory talks in Amman this month on whether there is a route back to direct negotiations.
Today, Ban will hold key meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem and Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas in the West Bank city of Ramallah, they said.
Direct negotiations have been frozen since September 2010, and no breakthrough on resuming them has been reported since the Amman meetings.
“My visit comes at an important moment,” Ban said last week when he announced the trip. “I will be there to encourage both sides to engage in earnest and create a positive atmosphere for moving forward.”
Ban is also expected to meet Israeli President Shimon Peres and other top officials from both sides during his stay, UN officials said.
The United Nations is part of the diplomatic Quartet that has been seeking to broker a Middle East peace deal, along with the European Union, Russia and the United States.
Diplomats said the Quartet’s main concern now is to make sure the unofficial contacts do not end.