Abbas aide casts doubt over talks

The path to formal negotiations with Israel is still blocked despite a US suggestion that the sides are close to returning to the table, a senior Palestinian official has said in another sign of scepticism that peace talks will resume.

Nabil Abu Rdeneh, a spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said that for actual peace talks to resume, Israel must first accept its pre-1967 war frontier as a baseline and halt settlement building, demands Israel’s leader has rejected in the past. The Palestinians seek a state in the lands Israel captured in 1967.