Tel Aviv/New York/Washington - US President Barack Obama, needing a breakthrough in the Middle East peace process, met Tuesday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas amid tight security in New York. The three-way meeting took place at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in Manhattan after Obama had separate meetings with Netanyahu and Abbas. There was no immediate information about the discussion aimed at reviving peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
The talks in New York were dampened by a warning from Israeli President Shimon Peres to the Palestinians that they should not expect an end to all Israeli settlement activities. Expectations remained low, with few predicting any breakthrough in the stand-off on the settlement issue that would allow a resumption of peace talks.
The exception was Peres, who said he hoped that "despite the low expectations, the meeting will yield results."
"The fact that the meeting is taking place in itself creates hope," he told students at an agricultural school in northern Israel, according to a statement from his office.
"I support the prime minister's position that negotiations should be opened without preconditions," Peres said.
"What do the Palestinians expect? That we announce that East Jerusalem is a settlement?" he asked rhetorically, adding there was "no chance" that Israel would agree to do so.
Abbas has made a total freeze of Israeli settlement activity a condition for resuming peace talks with the new Netanyahu government - and initially for meeting him as well.
He has not met Netanyahu since the hardliner took office almost six months ago.
Washington convinced Abbas to meet the Israeli premier on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly debates in New York, despite its failure to pressure Netanyahu into accepting his demands for a total settlement freeze.
Netanyahu, while accepting the policies of previous Israeli governments to build no new West Bank settlements, has acquiesced only to a limited and temporary moratorium of construction within existing ones.
To appease right-wing Israelis, he has approved the construction of nearly 3,000 new apartments throughout West Bank settlements. Beyond that, his government has said it is willing to freeze construction elsewhere in the West Bank for up to nine months.
East Jerusalem - or Jewish neighbourhoods built within Jerusalem's municipal boundaries but on occupied West Bank land - would, however, also not be included in the moratorium.
Abbas has rejected that offer. Obama's Middle East envoy attempted to finalize a long-awaited compromise in frantic shuttle diplomacy between Jerusalem and Ramallah over the weekend, but failed.
Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, meanwhile, said in New York Tuesday that the Palestinians had not changed their position.
The absence of a deal has dashed Obama's hopes to announce a relaunch of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process after the meeting. Critics have charged the parley will be little more than a photo opportunity, aimed at saving face for the US president, who had put his prestige behind holding the summit.
Obama was expected to attempt to narrow the gaps between the parties in separate talks with Netanyahu and Abbas. However, he allocated only 30 minutes each for the private talks, which Mideast observers interpreted as an indication that he had no real expectations of convincing them to abandon their positions.
The White House too played down the prospect of a breakthrough, with spokesman Robert Gibbs telling reporters Monday that "we have no grand expectations out of one meeting except to continue ... the hard work, day-to-day diplomacy that has to be done to seek a lasting peace."
