Asia

Asia

Pause' perhaps needed in Israeli-Palestinian talks: Obama

25 April 2014 22:49 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. U.S. President Barack Obama said on Friday a "pause" might be needed in U.S.-brokered peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, suggesting leaders on both sides lacked the will to make the necessary compromises, APA reports quoting Reuters.

Israel on Thursday suspended participation in negotiations with the Palestinians in response to President Mahmoud Abbas's unexpected unity pact with the rival Islamist Hamas group, which Israel and the United States consider a terrorist organization.

Speaking at a news conference in Seoul, Obama called the Palestinian move "unhelpful" and said it was one of a series of choices the two sides had made in recent weeks that had hurt the chances of reaching a peace deal.

"There may come a point at which there just needs to be a pause and both sides need to look at the alternatives," Obama said, offering a grim assessment of nine months of direct talks that were overseen by Washington but ultimately led nowhere.

While Obama insisted he was not ready to abandon his quest for Middle East peace, he said: "What we haven't seen is, frankly, the kind of political will to actually make tough decisions, and that's been true on both sides."

There was no immediate reaction from leaders in Israel or the Palestinian Territories, who have blamed each other for the latest in a string of failed peace efforts.

Obama was careful not to apportion blame and left open the hope that one day the respective camps would overcome their mutual distrust and walk through what he said was the only door available to them to end their generations-old conflict.

"We will continue to encourage them to walk through that door. Do I expect that they will walk through that door next week, next month, or even in the course of the next six months? No," he said.