JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak played down on Wednesday a rift with the United States over Jewish settlements and said peace efforts should focus on persuading Arab countries to forge ties with Israel. Barak said after talks in New York on Tuesday with U.S. Middle East envoy George Mitchell that Israel and Washington were still divided over ...

CAIRO (Reuters) - The Arab League said on Wednesday it saw a "window of hope" for Middle East peace and Arab states would respond positively to U.S. President Barack Obama's vision for resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict. But the league likened negotiating with Israel while settlements were continuing to expand as tantamount to surrendering on "matters over which we cannot ...

Arab foreign ministers vowed on Wednesday to support US President Barack Obama's Middle East peace efforts but said that normalisation with Israel depends on a halt to its settlement activity. Arab countries "are prepared to deal positively with the proposals of President Obama to solve the Arab-Israeli conflict," they said in a statement after a meeting at Arab League ...

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said on Friday that Israel's settlement expansion must stop but voiced optimism that an historic Middle East peace accord was "within reach." Mubarak also praised US President Barack Obama for leading a path towards agreement in the region and said the Arab world "must reciprocate with forthright leadership of its own," in an opinion column ...