Israel braces for unusually strong US criticism
14/03/2008
Israel i officials are preparing to come in for some exceptionally harsh criticism from US mediators at today's Middle Eastern peace conference, Reuters has reported unnamed insiders as saying.
The closed-door meeting will mark the first time since last November that Israeli, Palestinian and US officials have convened in tripartite discussions, which are intended to revive the stalled 'roadmap' to peace.
In a surprise move, however, Israeli defence minister Ehud Barak has declined to attend the meeting, instead sending senior defence ministry strategist Amos Gilad in his place.
Reuters reported that decision had caught some US and Palestinian officials off-guard and it attributed the move to a raft of controversial measures taken by the Jewish state over the past few weeks.
Israel recently defied the advice of international observers by reneging on a commitment not to expand its settlements in the West Bank - consistently cited as one of the main barriers to finding a lasting peace agreement.
"The United States considers the expansion of settlement activity to be not consistent with Israeli obligations under the roadmap and we have made that very clear," US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice bluntly asserted this week.
While Palestinian officials have also been accused of failing to meet their obligations to rein in militant activity, Reuters claimed the US has privately blamed Israel for exacerbating that challenge by staging repeated military incursions into Palestinian territory.
Earlier this month Israeli forces killed 110 Palestinians in a single weekend of fighting, approximately half of whom were civilians.
©