JERUSALEM, March 14: Israel came under fire for its continued Jewish settlement construction in the occupied West Bank at high-level talks on Friday with the Palestinians, hosted by a senior US envoy.

A construction freeze means “not one more brick”, Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad said, voicing anger at Israel’s failure to abide by its obligation to halt settlement activity in the West Bank.

The US delegation also complained about the Jewish settlement activity as well as Israel’s failure to sufficiently reduce the number of roadblocks in the West Bank, according to an Israeli official who asked not to be named.

The meeting, to discuss implementation of the stalled 2003 peace roadmap, was the first at senior level since March 2 when Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas suspended talks to protest an Israeli blitz on the Hamas-run Gaza Strip.

“Israel is eroding the very possibility of the two-state solution,” Fayyad said after the three-hour meeting hosted by US Lieutenant General William Fraser, who was appointed in January to oversee compliance with the roadmap.

“Numerous construction projects in many settlements are continuing every day. This is not a freeze by any standard,” said Fayyad.

The Israeli side responded that construction was only conducted in existing settlement blocs Israel plans to keep as part of a permanent agreement, an official said.

Israel’s delegation, led by an aide to Defence Minister Ehud Barak, charged that the Palestian Authority was “not doing enough to fight against terrorism”, the official said.

“It does not make any arrests and does not give information” on militants, he said.

The US embassy described the talks held at a Jerusalem hotel as “cordial but frank”.

“We examined areas where the parties are not meeting their commitments and the reasons why, and explored ways to accelerate the process and make the parties’ implementation of their roadmap obligations more effective,” the embassy said.

On the eve of the talks, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni admitted during a US visit that settlement construction was unhelpful to the peace process. “Basically, I don’t think that it helps,” Livni said.

Drafted by the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations, the roadmap calls for a halt to Jewish settlement activity in Palestinian territories and an end to Palestinian attacks against Israel.

The plan has made scant progress, but Israel and the Palestinians agreed in November to re-launch it during a conference in the United States that restarted the peace process after a seven-year hiatus.—AFP