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Kerry: Mideast Peace Talks at 'Critical Moment'

by Scott Stearns April 03, 2014

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry spoke by telephone Thursday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and plans to speak later in the day with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, after both sides broke parts of an agreement on talks toward a two-state solution.

During a visit to Algeria, where he discussed prospects for Mideast peace with Algerian Foreign Minister Ramtane Lamamra, Kerry said outsiders can push and nudge, but that the two sides themselves must make 'fundamental decisions and compromises.'

The top U.S. diplomat has said it is up to Israeli and Palestinian leaders to keep the process alive.

U.S. negotiators met with Israeli and Palestinian officials in overnight talks that lasted until four in the morning in an effort to move the peace process forward.

'I think it is a critical moment, obviously,' he said. 'The dialogue remains open. There was progress made in narrowing some of the questions that have arisen as a result of the events of the last few days, but there is still a gap. But that gap will have to be closed and close fairly soon.'

Kerry has spent the past few weeks trying to keep the negotiations going as the process closes in on the end of the initial nine-month period that Israeli and the Palestinians agreed to last year.

Events of the past few days have been the biggest challenges to eight months of talks, including the Israeli Cabinet's failure to approve the release of a group of Palestinian prisoners and Palestinian officials vote to join 15 international organizations that would draw them closer to enhanced U.N. recognition.

Kerry says Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Abbas both understand what the choices are and what the stakes are, as well as their own limits and dynamics. He says the fight here is not over the fundamental substance of a final status agreement on a two-state solution, but rather over the process to get there.

Each side is accusing the other of violating agreements guiding these U.S.-led talks that are scheduled to stop at the end of this month.

A senior State Department official said Wednesday that neither party had said they wanted to end the talks.