UNITED NATIONS, Sept 27: The Saudi Arabia foreign minister said on Wednesday that Israel should stop work on a ‘security wall’ in and along the West Bank and halt settlement activity there as a goodwill gesture to assure Arab states that it is serious about comprehensive peace talks.

Prince Saud al-Faisal stopped short of making his demand a condition for Arab attendance at a planned Middle East peace conference. And he said that in recent days, he had become encouraged about the prospects for the conference, which the United States is to sponsor in November, the New York Times said in a report.

But he would not promise that Saudi Arabia would attend, a major Israeli objective.

Prince al-Faisal’s comment that came after a meeting between Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and top officials from the gulf Arab states on the sidelines of UN General Assembly session here, forecast the tough road ahead for the Bush administration in trying to forge a comprehensive Middle East peace in the last months of President Bush’s term.

Saudi Arabia and America’s other Arab allies have insisted that the conference tackle the so-called final status issues that have bedevilled negotiators since 1979. They include the status of Jerusalem, the fate of Palestinian refugees who fled their homes or were forced out, the dismantling of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, and the borders of an eventual Palestinian state, the Times said.

During a briefing for reporters on Wednesday, Prince Saud raised another sticky issue for the Bush administration as it seeks progress on a peace proposal. He said that for any peace deal between Israelis and Palestinians to work, Hamas must be brought into another national unity government with Fatah.

He said if the international community had accepted the Palestinian national unity government in February, when Saudi Arabia brokered an accord establishing the government, Hamas might have eventually renounced violence against Israel. He called that “water under the bridge now”, but added that Saudi Arabia still wanted to establish another national unity government between Hamas and Fatah. “You have to,” he said. “Peace cannot be made by one man or by half a people.”