U.S. Attacks Netanyahu Visit to Settlement

WASHINGTON (Reuter) - The United States Tuesday delivered its sharpest attack yet on the settlements policy of Israel's Likud government, saying a trip by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to one such outpost was "not useful and not constructive."

The comment by State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns reflected the growing frustration of the Clinton administration with Netanyahu's stand on settlements, which Washington believes is helping to stall the peace process.

Netanyahu's first official visit to a Jewish settlement in the West Bank on Tuesday was a show of defiance to Palestinians opposed to his policy of expanding the outposts. Israel's former Labour government, ousted in May, had frozen settlement building.

During his trip to the community of Ariel, just one day after the Palestinian Authority called for an immediate halt to all settlement activity, the Israeli premier defended his stance saying: "Why not develop communities here?"

Burns, in an unsolicited statement to reporters in Washington, said: "If you're asking about Prime Minister Netanyahu's visit to the Ariel settlement ... I would say that it's a very complicating factor.

"If you look at the potential impact on the peace negotiations, this move today of calling for an expansion of settlements, going to Ariel, is certainly not useful and not constructive," he added. "It's not going to help that process."

The State Department has long said that settlements were not helpful to the peace process, but its decision to target Netanyahu's trip on Tuesday went well beyond the routine repetition of a stock phrase.

The main symptom of the Middle East deadlock has been the so far fruitless struggle of Palestinian and Israeli officials for the past two months to close a deal on Israel's handover of most of the West Bank town of Hebron to the Palestinian Authority.

Each side accuses the other of delaying an agreement.

U.S. Middle East coordinator Dennis Ross mediated the first three weeks of talks before returning home empty-handed at the end of October.

Burns said Ross would not return to the region "until he believes that there's a reason to go out."

Palestinian officials said on Tuesday the Palestinians would boycott most multilateral peace talks to protest at what they say is Israel's delay in implementing interim peace deals signed last year.