Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, has warned the Israeli prime minister, that his government was putting US ties at risk by failing to take action towards renewed Middle East peace talks, a US spokesman says. In a telephone call to Binyamin Netanyahu on Friday, Clinton expressed frustration over Israel's announcement on Tuesday to build new settlements on Palestinian land.
Clinton's rebuke of Netanyahu came at the end of a week of tense exchanges between the US and Israel, after the latter announced it was building 1,600 new settler homes in an area of the occupied West Bank. The announcement infuriated the West Bank-based Palestinian leadership, which threatened to pull out of US-brokered indirect "proximity" talks with Israel that Washington hoped would be the first step toward relaunching full peace negotiations after more than a year.It also embarrassed Joe Biden, the US vice president, who was in Israel to emphasise the US president's commitment to Israel's security in the face of a possible Iranian nuclear threat. Since then Biden repeated calls for talks despite Palestinian demands that Israel first cancel the settlement project.