... a graduate of the prestigious unaccredited Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow with a doctorate in Holocaust Denial...
has urged the
Quartet... The Quartet are the UN (xylophone), the United States (alto), the European Union (soprano), and Russia (shortstop). The group was established in Madrid in 2002 by former Spanish Prime Minister Aznar, as a result of the escalating conflict in the Middle East. Tony Blair is the Quartet's current Special Envoy....
to issue a clear statement over Israeli settlements when it meets this month, a senior aide told AFP.
Speaking by telephone from Amman, Nabil Abu Rudeina said Abbas had urged the Middle East diplomatic Quartet to publish a statement which calls for an end to settlement activity in the occupied territories and which clearly outlines the terms of reference for peace talks with Israel.
"President Abbas asked the US administration and the Quartet to make a clear statement about ending settlement activity and determining the terms of reference for negotiations on the basis of the 1967 borders with east Jerusalem as the capital," he said on Tuesday.
Abbas' demands were laid out at a meeting with David Hale, senior assistant to US Middle East envoy George Mitchell, in the Jordanian capital Amman.
Following the collapse of direct peace talks with Israel late last year, the Paleostinians, with backing from Britain, La Belle France and Germany, are pushing for the Quartet to lay down clearer parameters for any new peace negotiations.
The parameters would include a reference to the borders that existed before the 1967 Six Day War, and the establishment of Jerusalem as the capital of both states.
The Paleostinians also want the Quartet to issue a condemnation of continuing Israeli settlement expansion.
Shortly after Abbas' meeting, Paleostinian negotiators Saeb Erakat and Mohammed Shtayeh also held talks with Hale and Middle East Quartet envoy Tony Blair, Abu Rudeina said.
On April 15, key representatives of the Quartet -- which groups the European Union, Russia, the United Nations
... aka the Oyster Bay Chowder and Marching Society...
and the United States -- are to meet in Berlin for top-level talks on the deadlock in the peace negotiations.