EU's Ashton "strongly regrets" end of Israeli settlement freeze

Sep 27, 2010, 17:37 GMT

Brussels - The European Union's foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, 'strongly regrets' Israel's failure to renew its partial freeze on construction in occupied Palestinian territory, her spokeswoman said Monday.

The EU, along with its Quartet partners - the United States, Russia and the United Nations - had called on the Israeli government to maintain the 10-month-old moratorium on Jewish settlements in the West Bank in order to advance peace talks with the Palestinians.

But the international appeal failed to make an impact, as the moratorium was left to expire on Sunday night.

'The position of the EU is very clear: settlements are illegal under international law, constitute an obstacle to peace and threaten to make a two-state solution impossible,' Ashton's spokeswoman, Maja Kocijancic, told the German Press Agency dpa.

'We will carefully examine the consequences of this decision and consult with the parties and our Quartet and Arab partners,' she added.

Kocijancic said the EU was urging restraint on both sides and stressed that it was 'in everybody's interest to find a satisfactory way for the (peace) negotiations to continue and gather momentum.'