MIDDLE EAST:Israel's Jerusalem municipality yesterday announced plans to build 600 new housing units in a Jewish settlement, in an area of the occupied West Bank the Israeli government considers part of the holy city.
The decision to build within the settlement of Pisgat Zeev coincided with a visit by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who is trying to bolster peace talks in which Israeli settlement activities have caused friction with Palestinians.
Commenting on the project, Ms Rice said at a news conference in Amman: "We continue to state America's position that settlement activity should stop, that its expansion should stop - that it is indeed not consistent with 'road map' obligations." Ms Rice was referring to a long-stalled, US-backed peace plan that calls on Israel to halt all settlement activity in the West Bank and obliges Palestinians to rein in militants.
Asked about the proposed new construction in Pisgat Zeev, a spokesman for the prime minister, Ehud Olmert, said: "I am not aware of it."
Earlier, Mr Olmert told legislators from his Kadima party that Israel had made no secret it intended to continue building in what he called Jewish neighbourhoods of east Jerusalem and in West Bank settlements it intends to keep in any peace deal.
In recent months, Israel has announced plans to build hundreds of housing units for Jews in and near Arab East Jerusalem, which it captured along with the rest of the West Bank in the 1967 Middle East war.
A report by Israel's Peace Now group said there has been a surge this year in new projects in the area compared with two tenders issued in 2007 for the construction of 46 homes in and around East Jerusalem. -