CAIRO — Winding up a Middle East tour, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton repeated on Wednesday that while the Obama administration rejects the legitimacy of Israeli settlement expansion, it nonetheless believes that Israeli-Palestinian negotiations should precede a permanent freeze on such construction.
Her arguments conflicted with Arab and Palestinian demands that all settlement activity be frozen as a precondition for resuming talks with Israel.
Mrs. Clinton was speaking to reporters after meetings here with President Hosni Mubarak and other Egyptian officials.
During Mrs. Clinton’s regional diplomacy, Arab officials have expressed anger at her readiness to promote a proposal by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel for a moratorium on new housing units in the West Bank that would allow building or finishing about 3,000 more units and exclude East Jerusalem from any construction limits.
In a speech Tuesday and in meetings with Arab foreign ministers during a conference of Arab and Western nations in Marrakesh, Morocco, Mrs. Clinton made it clear that the Israeli government would not agree to President Obama’s call for a complete halt to settlement construction. Instead she depicted Mr. Netanyahu’s offer as a reasonable compromise that could still form the basis for progress.
“It is not what we want; it is nowhere near enough,” Mrs. Clinton told Al Jazeera. “But I think when you keep your eye on what we want to achieve, it is a better place to be than the alternative. And therefore, I think we should be trying to keep moving the parties.”
In Cairo on Wednesday, Mrs. Clinton revisited the theme. “We do not accept the legitimacy of settlement activity and we have a very firm belief that ending all settlement activity, current and future, would be preferable,” Clinton said after meeting Mr. Mubarak, Reuters reported.
“Getting into final status negotiations will allow us to bring an end to settlement activity,” she added.
Significantly, Egypt, the Arab world’s most populous nation and a key player in regional diplomacy, chose not to publicly criticize Mrs. Clinton’s readiness to promote Mr. Netanyahu’s ideas and to step away from the demand for a total freeze on settlements.
Egypt’s reticence may relate, analysts said, to the fact that President Obama chose Cairo as the venue from which to deliver a landmark speech last June on his administration’s relationship with the Arab and Muslim world. Mr. Mubarak may thus be loath to criticize Mr. Obama publicly so soon after the prestigious event.
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