Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday intensified calls for face-to-face peace talks with the Palestinians, pledging to visit Ramallah if Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas would come to Jerusalem.Netanyahu spoke to reporters after talks with visiting US Middle East envoy George Mitchell and one week ahead of a visit to the White House for a meeting with US President Barack Obama. I call on President Mahmoud Abbas to come to Jerusalem, and I am prepared to go to Ramallah, he said. Israel's declared capital of Jerusalem is just a short drive from Ramallah, the occupied West Bank's political capital and Abbas's seat of power. But since May the two sides have been negotiating through Mitchell, who shuttles between them. The Palestinians froze direct negotiations in December 2008, when Israel launched a deadly offensive against Gaza to halt rocket attacks. I hope and I believe that a main part of my conversations with President Obama in Washington next week will be focused on how to start direct peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians right away, Netanyahu added. I think that this is the only way that we'll solve the intricate problems that we're discussing between us, he said. Netanyahu's Defence Minister Ehud Barak on Wednesday said he would meet Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad in the coming days for a rare high-level meeting between the two sides.
