Abbas: Mideast peace is more important than settlement building

               Achieving Middle East peace is more important than building more settlements, Israel Radio quoted Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas as saying on Thursday, urging Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government to seize the opportunity to strike a final-status deal. Direct peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, relaunched at a Washington D.C. ceremony in early September, have been stalled over Israel's refusal to further extend its moratorium on settlement building, which expired on September 26. More recently, freshly released plan to build 1,300 new apartments in and around Jerusalem have brought U.S. President Barack Obama and Netanyahu's right-wing cabinet on a collision course, with Obama saying Tuesday that such plans were "never helpful". A day earlier, the U.S. State department said Washington was "deeply disappointed" by Israel's plans to build in the settlements. Following the U.S. criticism, Netanyahu's office issued a statement, insisting that "Jerusalem is not a settlement. Jerusalem is the capital of the State of Israel" and that "Israel has never accepted upon itself restrictions of any kind on construction in Jerusalem." However, speaking at a Ramallah rally commemorating the sixth anniversary of the death of former PLO chief Yasser Arafat, PA President Abbas said that peace was more important than building more settlements and from what he called "narrow interests," such as maintaining Netanyahu's right-leaning coalition. "The children of Israel and Palestine must be taste the flavor of coexistence, stability and mutual respect, before missing out on such an opportunity," Abbas said, reiterating the Palestinian refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state. The Palestinian president also said a final-status agreement would not be signed before all of the Palestinian prisoners would be released from Israeli jails. "I challenge anyone who says we did not implement all our obligations," he said. "We met all our obligations, but Israel did not implement even one of its obligations." He criticized U.S. and Israeli statements that he would be taking unilateral action by going to the UN Security Council to complain against Israeli settlements in the West Bank or demand recognition of the June 4, 1967 lines as the borders of a future Palestinian state. "I said we will go to the Security Council and they started saying that it was a unilateral action even before I went," he said. "Israel is doing unilateral actions daily in its construction of the separation wall and the settlements, but this is not called unilateral," he added. Earlier on Thursday, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, referring to Netanyahu's standoff with the Obama administration, saying he "congratulated and supported the prime minister for his stance on the building issue." "The demand to cease construction in Gilo and Har Homa are unreasonable. Not for three months, not for one day" the FM said, adding that anyone who was "seeking to pressure into an agreement would be better off pressuring the other side." (15,52)