JERUSALEM, Dec 12: Palestinians on Wednesday demanded that Israel halt all settlement activity as the two sides met for the first time since reviving the stalled Middle East peace process at a US sponsored conference.

Israel’s recent decision to expand a settlement in east Jerusalem dominated the meeting between the negotiating teams headed by Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and former Palestinian premier Ahmed Qorei, officials said.

“The meeting focused on one single issue — settlements,” Saeb Erakat, a member of the Palestinian team, said that after the teams huddled at a Jerusalem hotel, away from the media glare.

“We demanded a total stop, without exception, to the settlements, including those linked to natural growth,” Qorei said in a statement, saying the settlements were “a stumbling block on the road toward a real peace.” “We demanded that they repeal the decision (to expand a Jerusalem settlement) and that they strictly adhere to the first phase of the roadmap which clearly mentions a total stop to settlements,” he said. Last week Israel invited bids for more than 300 new housing units in the east Jerusalem neighbourhood known to Arabs as Abu Ghneim and to Israelis as Har Homa.

The move followed hard on the heels of the November conference in Annapolis, when Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and president Mahmud Abbas had formally revived peace talks after a seven-year freeze.

The housing tender sparked howls of protest from the Palestinians and criticism from Israel’s main ally Washington and the European Union.

Erakat said that the Palestinians would appeal to the Americans, as arbiters of the revived peace process, to pressure Israel to repeal the decision.

At Annapolis, Abbas and Olmert pledged to work toward a comprehensive deal by the end of 2008 and to implement the international roadmap plan, which calls on Israel to halt all settlement activity and for the Palestinians to improve law and order.

In addition to settlements, the two sides remain deeply divided on the other most difficult issues of their decades-old conflict that have sunk previous peace attempts — borders, refugees and the status of Jerusalem.

Another issue hanging over the re-launched talks is Hamas’s control of the Gaza Strip, the smaller half of the Palestinians’ promised state.—AFP