Mahmoud Abbas set to claim all of West Bank area

PALESTINIAN President Mahmoud Abbas has told Arab powers he may seek US recognition for a Palestinian state taking in all of the West Bank if peace talks with Israel do not restart, an aide said yesterday.

The idea, raised during closed-door Arab League deliberations in Libya on Friday, could step up pressure on Israel to extend a freeze on Jewish settlement building in the occupied territory, without which Abbas has said that peace negotiations cannot continue.

Arab foreign ministers endorsed that Palestinian position but, hoping to head off a collapse of the talks launched by US President Barak Obama just five weeks ago, said they would reconvene in a month to discuss "alternatives" mooted by Abbas.

Senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said these included "ask(ing] the United States to recognise the state of Palestine on the 1967 borders" and studying the possibility of a similar UN recognition through a Security Council resolution.

"I cannot specify all the alternatives that were presented by president Abbas, but the president will keep working with the American administration to achieve a full cessation of settlement activities in order to restart talks," Erekat said.

A diplomatic source said another of the alternatives put forward by Abbas was for him to threaten to step down unless settlement building is halted.

Abbas had been expected to address Arab heads of state gathered in the Libyan town of Sirte yesterday, but ultimately did not deliver a speech.

Palestinians want a state in the West Bank and in Gaza, lands Israel captured from Jordan and Egypt in the 1967 war.