'PA presents Quartet with 4 conditions for resumed talks'

Saeb Erekat says conditions include negotiations based on '67 lines, EU support for Palestinian reconciliation, statehood bid, Ma'an reports.

By JPOST.COM STAFF
erekat raise the roof REUTERS 311 (photo credit: REUTERS)
erekat raise the roof REUTERS 311
(photo credit: REUTERS)
Palestinian Authority negotiator Saeb Erekat said that the PA has given the Quartet its four official demands for restarting peace negotiations, which could preempt its bid to seek a declaration of statehood in the United Nations this September.
Among the demands is a complete halt to West Bank settlement activity, something that Israel has refused to do since a ten-month settlement freeze that expired late last year, Palestinian news agency Ma'an reported on Saturday.
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The other demands were that pre-1967 lines with mutually agreed land swaps be the basis for negotiations, European Union support for Palestinian reconciliation efforts, EU support for a declaration of Palestinian statehood in the UN, and an EU acknowledgment that a declaration of statehood does not contradict peace talks, according to the report.
In early June, Erekat said that the Palestinians were ready to restart peace negotiations if based around the principles US President Barack Obama laid out in his State Department address on the Middle East, the Washington Post reported.
According to the report, Erekat, who met at the beginning of the month with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and other senior White House officials, said that if Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu accepted Obama's platform of a return to pre-1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, then he would have a partner for negotiations.
He also said that according to what the prime minister said at the US Congress during his Washington visit, "he's not a partner for peace."
Netanyahu had rejected Obama's 1967-lines formulation, saying that any borders based on the pre-Six Day War lines would be "indefensible."