Ahlul Bayt News Agency - ABNA - Egypt has expressed pessimism about the future direct talks between the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Israel, given Tel Aviv's decision to resume settlement work.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit said on Wednesday that the Palestinians would not be able to remain in the US-sponsored talks after Israel's refusal to extend its settlement slowdown.
"Despite the international efforts, I am not optimistic," Aboul Gheit said in a televised interview with the Dubai-based al-Arabiya TV.
The Egyptian official was referring to a 10-month moratorium on settlement construction on Palestinian land -- a partial freeze which failed to include East al-Quds (Jerusalem) and allowed construction of "community centers" across the West Bank.
Aboul Gheit's remarks come as Arab foreign ministers are to convene in Libya to discuss the continuation of the PA-Israeli talks, negotiations that he said were "stopped before they even began."
The troubled talks were further jeopardized by remarks made by Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman at the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Tuesday.
Lieberman said he believed that Israel must arrive at an interim agreement with the Palestinians that "could take a few decades," and that an ultimate agreement would require population and territorial exchanges.
The Egyptian foreign minister further pointed out that he did not listen to his Israeli counterpart's speech as he did not ascribe importance to his words.
"It is known that Lieberman talks a lot, but not always out of an understanding of the framework in which he is in," he concluded.
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