JERUSALEM - Israel's defense minister said Tuesday the U.S. has halted talks with Israel about curbing West Bank settlement construction and resuming peace talks with the Palestinians because Washington is distracted by the WikiLeaks release of secret documents.
Ehud Barak told a parliamentary committee that Washington was busy dealing with fallout from the release of diplomatic memos on the WikiLeaks website, as well as with tensions between North and South Korea.
Those issues have pre-empted contacts over Israeli settlements and peace talks, he said. "For now the matter has been stopped entirely, because of the Americans' lack of attention and concentration," Barak said.
In Washington, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley denied that the U.S. was holding up the talks. "The process has not stopped," he told reporters. "Our efforts are not suspended." He said that instead, perhaps Israel was preoccupied with putting out a huge forest fire that burned until Sunday.
The U.S. has pressed Israel to renew a moratorium on new settlement construction in exchange for security and diplomatic assurances. Israel wants that in writing, as well as a written pledge that disputed east Jerusalem will be exempted from the moratorium.
Palestinians say they won't return to stalled peace talks unless Israel halts all building in the West Bank and east Jerusalem — lands they want for part of their future state.
Peace talks began in September but ground to a halt three weeks later after Israel's original moratorium on new West Bank construction expired.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu returned from a November trip to the U.S. with a list of security and diplomatic guarantees, including 20 next-generation stealth fighter planes and U.S. pledges to veto anti-Israel resolutions at the United Nations, according to Israeli officials. In exchange, Israel was to renew limits on settlement construction that expired in late September.
But days later, the deal snagged after members of Netanyahu's Cabinet demanded a written pledge from the U.S. that the moratorium would exclude east Jerusalem. Such a pledge has not materialized.
The U.S. hopes a renewed moratorium would allow Israel and the Palestinians to make significant progress toward working out a deal on their future borders.
With borders determined, Israel could resume building on any territories it would expect to keep under a final peace deal.
