Cairo - US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton arrived in Cairo on Tuesday, caught in the middle of an Arab-Israeli row over whether an absolute freeze of Israeli construction in the occupied West Bank should be a precondition for reviving peace talks. As Clinton's Middle East tour entered its fourth day, Palestinians and Israelis entrenched themselves in their respective positions, making prospects of a speedy revival of negotiations more distant.
Clinton was scheduled to meet with her Egyptian counterpart Ahmed Abul Gheit and intelligence chief Omar Suleiman to discuss Egypt's role as broker between Israelis and Palestinians, as well as between rival Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah, Egyptian diplomats told the German Press Agency dpa.
Clinton is due to meet with President Hosny Mubarak on Wednesday.
Her visit comes after the United States on Saturday backed Israel's view that continued construction in Israeli settlements in the West Bank should not preclude peace talks.
The secretary of state, speaking after a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem, hailed his "unprecedented" offer to temporarily halt all construction in West Bank settlements, with the exception of under 3,000 housing units already in the pipelines.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has rejected that offer, which also excludes East Jerusalem, which Israel annexed in 1967 and which the Netanyahu government has called an inseparable part of Israel's "eternal and undivided capital."
Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat has said the Palestinians question the Netanyahu government's commitment to "meaningful and credible negotiations" that would lead to the establishment of a sovereign and independent Palestinian state.
He said the Palestinians have no interest in holding negotiations for the sake of negotiations, just to "provide a cover behind which Israel will further entrench its occupation, and continue to create 'facts on the ground.'"
Clinton's supportive remarks with Netanyahu in Jerusalem Saturday, in which she also backed his stance that negotiations should begin without preconditions, have sparked ire among Palestinians and Arabs, who said her statements damaged some of the high hopes they had placed in the administration of Barack Obama to be more of a neutral broker than its predecessor was perceived to have been.
Obama likewise called for Israeli "restraint" on construction in West Bank settlements, rather than the "freeze" he had previously supported.
In Morocco on Monday, Clinton tried to calm the Arab and Palestinian concern, vowing that the Obama administration's position against settlements "has not changed," and clarifying that Netanyahu's offer still "falls far short of what we would characterize as our position."
Israel's defence minister meanwhile insisted Tuesday that the hardline government he had joined was genuinely interested in renewing peace talks with the Palestinians.
Ehud Barak, of the left-to-centre Labour Party, said he that reviving the negotiations was a "vital" Israeli interest.
"We in Israel appreciate very much the (US) efforts ... to try and bring about a renewal of (Israeli-Palestinian) negotiations ... The Israeli government continues to act and I am in the government mainly to make sure that this happens," he told Israel Radio.
He said talks with the US would continue when he and Netanyahu travel to Washington early next week.
Holding negotiations on the creation of a Palestinian state was in Israel's interest because otherwise support among Palestinians for a bi-national state would grow, or they could decide to declare a state unilaterally, he warned.
"The goal of the negotiations is clear: To reach an agreement that will end the conflict and the mutual claims, and bring about the establishment of a Palestinian state with territorial and economic viability next to the state of Israel, in a way that will end our control of another people and will end the occupation that began in '67," said Barak.
Obama's special envoy to the Middle East, George Mitchell, meanwhile was in Amman for talks with Abbas, continuing his intense, but thus far unsuccessful efforts to nudge the sides back to the negotiating table.
Clinton flew to Cairo from Morocco, where she took part in a conference with Arab foreign ministers and businessmen.
