Palestinians will not pursue peace talks with Israel without an agreed timeline for reaching a deal on statehood, chief Palestinian negotiator Ahmed Qurie said on Tuesday.
"The Israeli prime minister had announced that he will not accept a timeline, and we say we won't accept negotiations without a timeline. We do not want to go to open negotiations," Qurie told reporters.
He made the comments ahead of a planned visit to Israel and the occupied West Bank at the weekend by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who is preparing the ground for a U.S.-led Middle East conference in late November or early December.
Western and Israeli officials have described a two-track process coming out of the Annapolis, Maryland meeting: the start of formal talks over a Palestinian state and a push to implement the first phase of a long-stalled "road map" peace plan.
The officials said Washington was considering holding a large follow-up meeting in mid-2008, bringing the two tracks together in a way that the Palestinians hope will culminate in some sort of agreement on statehood.
By holding a follow-up session, the United States could offer the Palestinians a semblance of a timeline without setting firm deadlines opposed by Israel, Western diplomats said.
"The conference is an important opportunity that should be exploited, but not at any price," Qurie said.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's spokeswoman, Miri Eisin, declined to respond to Qurie's demands for a timeline, which Israel has long opposed.
"Let's let the negotiating teams get to work and see where they go," she said.
Israel and the Palestinians failed to reach agreement on the final status issues -- statehood borders and the fate of Jerusalem and Palestinian refugees -- in talks that collapsed in 2001 amid a surge in violence.
They also have not met all their commitments under the 2003 road map which charts reciprocal confidence-building steps that include a Palestinian crackdown on militants and a halt to Israeli settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank.
Both sides have voiced concern about another outbreak of fighting should the talks collapse again with the Palestinians divided between Hamas Islamists controlling the Gaza Strip and President Mahmoud Abbas's secular Fatah faction holding sway in the West Bank.
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