Palestinians, Israelis complete US talks, plan for more in April

Palestinian and Israeli negotiators yesterday completed over a week of negotiations in the United States yesterday by agreeing to resume talks on April 6 in Washington at at Bolling Air Force Base, location of the round of talks that just ended, US State Department deputy spokesman James Foley said yesterday.

"The United States is committed to continuing to help Israelis and Palestinians reach an agreement on all permanent status issues by September 13th," Foley said. He referred to the discussions that wrapped up yesterday as " a kind of brainstorming session, in which the parties were exchanging ideas with each other, and attempting to achieve a better understanding of each other's needs and requirements."

"We believe that these talks were successful in achieving a real exchange of ideas, and a greater and deeper understanding of the needs and requirements by each side of the other side; and that is the critical predicate, as I indicated, to achieving the concrete negotiating progress that we're going to need, in a very accelerated fashion, in the course of the next six months," Foley said.

On the US role in the round of talks that just ended between the two sides, Foley said, "Mostly -- overwhelmingly -- they met with each other. Occasionally, either Dennis Ross or Aaron Miller did sit down with them separately, I think a couple of times together, with both delegations as well."