Mitchell visit uncertain amid "worst US-Israel crisis in 35 years"

Mar 15, 2010, 15:16 GMT

Tel Aviv - A visit to Israel and the Palestinian areas by Washington's envoy to the Middle East remained uncertain Monday, a day before he had been expected to arrive for long-anticipated indirect peace talks, officials said.

The uncertainty came amid a serious US-Israeli crisis, sparked by an Israel's announcement last week that it would build 1,600 new homes in East Jerusalem.

That announcement came in the midst of a visit by US Vice President Joe Biden, and a day after envoy George Mitchell had announced the start of indirect Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

When he made the announcement, Mitchell said he would return this week to hold the first round of indirect talks.

Palestinian and Israeli officials said he would arrive Tuesday.

But Kurt Hoyer, a spokesman for the US embassy in Tel Aviv, said the visit's details were not finalized by late Monday afternoon.

'There is no timetable. It's all up in the air,' he told the German Press Agency dpa.

Israeli media quoted Israel's ambassador to Washington, Michael Oren, as calling the US-Israeli crisis the worst in 35 years.

He reportedly made the remark in a conference cal with Israeli consuls in the US on Saturday night.

US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in an unusually harsh telephone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Friday said Washington saw the the announcement to build 1,600 homes in East Jerusalem's ultra-Orthodox neighbourhood of Ramat Shlomo as 'a deeply negative signal about Israel's approach to the bilateral relationship and counter to the spirit of the vice president's trip.'

She said the action had 'undermined trust and confidence in the peace process and in America's interests,' State Department spokesman PJ Crowley said.

Clinton 'made clear that the Israeli government needed to demonstrate not just through words, but through specific actions, that they are committed to this relationship and to the peace process,' Crowley said.

Israeli media reported Monday that these specific actions included shelving the Ramat Shlomo project, as well as other confidence- building measures to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who has threatened he would not go through with the indirect talks.