AMMAN, March 31: US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Monday Israel must stop expanding Jewish settlements but voiced confidence peace talks were on track despite an Israeli announcement of a new housing project.

“We continue to state America’s position that settlement activity should stop, that its expansion should stop — that it is indeed not consistent with ‘road map’ obligations,” Rice said after the Jerusalem municipality announced the project.

The US-backed road map, at the heart of the first Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations in seven years, requires the Jewish state to halt all settlement activity in the West Bank and obliges Palestinians to rein in militants.

Despite US concern that settlement building could derail peace efforts, Israel’s Jerusalem municipality unveiled a plan to build 600 houses in Pisgat Zeev.

Israel widened Jerusalem’s boundaries after capturing the eastern part of the holy city in the 1967 war. Israel considers all of Jerusalem its capital. Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of a future state in the West Bank and Gaza.

Casting a pall over the US-sponsored peace talks, Israel has in recent months announced plans to build hundreds of houses for Jews in and around Arab East Jerusalem.

Asked about the Pisgat Zeev plan, Nabil Abu Rdainah, a senior aide to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said: “This action is condemned. Israel is deliberately placing obstacles in Rice’s path.”—Reuters