Jerusalem - US Middle East envoy George Mitchell failed Friday in his bid to achieve a compromise on Israeli settlement construction, which would facilitate an Israeli-Palestinian meeting and lay the groundwork for restarting stalled peace talks. "This shuttle is over without an agreement," senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said after Mitchell met Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah, directly after holding talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem.
It was the third time the US envoy met Netanyahu in a bid to reach a compromise on a partial and temporary freeze in Israeli construction in West Bank settlements.
Abbas has made a total freeze - which the US has also demanded - a condition for holding his first meeting with Netanyahu, who took office nearly six months ago. Abbas has also made it a condition for restarting peace talks, which were suspended last year as Israel entered its election campaign.
The Israeli leader has said that, while Israel will build no new settlements in the West Bank, it will continue construction inside existing ones to accommodate population expansion, so-called "natural growth."
However, Israeli officials have said that Netanyahu is ready to accept a building moratorium of up to six months - excluding the construction of nearly 3,000 apartments in a number of existing Jewish settlements, which would be exempt and continue.
Israel Radio said at Friday's meeting Netanyahu had agreed to extend this freeze for several more months, but Abbas, in his talks with Mitchell, rejected this.
"President Abbas will not agree to a middle-ground solution on the settlements," Erekat said.
Mitchell met again with Netanyahu Friday afternoon, after returning from Ramallah, hours before the start of the two-day Jewish new year festival,which begins at sundown.
Two earlier Netanyahu-Mitchell meetings this week failed to finalize the desired and long-negotiated compromise on a settlement freeze.
The US and Palestinians are firm on a freeze of one year, and Abbas has insisted that a settlement freeze should be total and should not include "natural growth."
Netanyahu however reiterated his stance in interviews with the Israeli media, ahead of the Jewish New Year.
"A freeze for me means zero construction. I prefer to call it a building slowdown," he told Israel's Channel 2 television Thursday.
"I want to help advance the beginning of the (peace) process and I want at the same time to assist in the normal life of the settlers, who are also citizens of Israel," Netanyahu said.
Asked about the possible meeting with Obama and Abbas on the fringes of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, he said that no parley has yet been arranged.
"I never asked for one, and I'm not the one stipulating conditions for it to take place," he said.
The premier said he was ready to see the creation of a "truly demilitarized" Palestinian state, with international guarantees for security arrangements for Israel.
However, he added, such a state "has to recognize the existence, and right of existence, of Israel as the national home of the Jewish people."
