Stakes are raised in outcome of peace talks

Mubarak warns "terrorism will erupt in Middle East" if negotiations fail as King Abdullah says "historical opportunity should not be missed".

JERUSALEM // Calls for Palestinian-Israeli talks to continue took on added urgency yesterday after Egypt's president warned of a surge in terrorist attacks if they falter and Jordan's king declared they are a chance for peace that must be seized.

Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian president, warned that "violence and terrorism will erupt in the Middle East and all over the world" if the peace talks collapse. Mr Mubarak met separately yesterday in Cairo with the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, and Bill Clinton, the former US president.

In Amman, King Abdullah II held talks with Israel's social affairs minister, Issac Herzog, saying afterward: "We must make all possible efforts to move towards peace through the direct talks." The negotiations, he added, were an "historical opportunity" that "should not be missed". The appeals by the two prominent Arab leaders came amid reports that the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and a group of top ministers yesterday were to debate resuming a freeze on settlement construction in the West Bank, just days before a meeting between Arab foreign ministers and Mr Abbas.

Late yesterday, however, the Israeli premier's office issued a statement saying Mr Netanyahu and his ministers had only discussed global hostility towards Israel after its troops stormed a Gaza-bound aid boat that was trying to run the Israeli blockade in May, killing nine Turkish activists. "The Forum of Seven did not hold a debate on the issue of efforts to allow the continuation of peace talks," the statement said.

Israeli media had reported that Mr Netanyahu was to discuss a 60-day building moratorium in exchange for a US deal offering security and other guarantees. If he won approval of the proposal, he would assemble his 15-member security cabinet in a bid to win their support, the reports said. Israel's resumption of settlement building last week is the latest threat to Palestinian-Israeli peace talks, which restarted September 2 in Washington.

Mr Abbas has said the construction must stop for the negotiations to continue, a stance that received popular backing following a meeting on Saturday of the Palestine Liberation Organisation's executive committee. Mr Abbas said he intends to decide whether to bow out of the talks at a meeting of the Arab League in Libya on Friday. A study released on Monday found that 66 per cent of Palestinians support Mr Abbas's stance on the settlement issue.

Critics have warned that Mr Abbas and the Palestinians have pursued a dead-end strategy by predicating negotiations on settlement expansion. But Khalil Shikaki, the director of the Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research, which conducted the study, said the results suggest that Mr Abbas's strategy of not publicly bending on the issue could have earned him more public support. "For now, Abu Mazen seems to be doing fine, and it [the support] gives him some room for maneuver," he said, referring to Mr Abbas by his kunya, or honorific.

More than 120 Jewish settlements, with roughly 300,000 settlers living in them, are located in the West Bank. The international community considers the settlements illegal, and Palestinians want the land on which they are located for a future state. On Monday, the London-based daily Asharq al-Awsat reported that Mr Netanyahu had agreed to the 60-day building freeze, persuaded by incentives from the United States that included weaponry and allowing Israeli soldiers to maintain a presence inside the West Bank in the event of a deal with the Palestinians.

The Israeli leader has neither confirmed his change of heart on the freeze nor the US inducements that reportedly led to it, but said at a cabinet meeting on Monday he was "in the midst of sensitive diplomatic contacts with the US administration" in "to find a solution that will allow the continuation of the talks". At his meeting yesterday, Mr Netanyahu was expected to encounter resistance from some ministers in his pro-settler cabinet, which is divided over the issue. Half of his cabinet of 30 ministers, for example, are opposed to an extension of the freeze, according to a poll by the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth that was published on Monday.

His reported opening to re-freezing settlement construction also earned him a barrage of criticism yesterday from settlers. Moshe Rosenbaum, the head of Beit El's regional council, called the prospect of another freeze a "shameful and humiliating injury to basic human rights, my rights as a man and a Jew living in his country".