JERUSALEM (AFP) ? EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said she was not certain the UN will vote on backing a Palestinian state in September, in an interview with Haaretz newspaper published on Thursday.
And in a separate report, the Maariv newspaper said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Ashton he would be willing to resume peace talks based on the 1967 borders if the Palestinians recognise Israel as a Jewish state.
Speaking to Haaretz in Brussels earlier this week, Ashton said the substance of the Palestinian resolution which will be put to a vote had not yet been pinned down.
"It will depend very much on what the resolution says as to how the international community in general, and the EU in particular, votes," the European Union's top diplomat told the paper.
"It is quite possible that that there could be a vote at the UN where the European Union has no difficulty in voting for that," she said, without explaining further.
The Palestinians are hoping to seek UN membership and recognition of their state on the 1967 lines when the 192-member body meets in September.
But the leadership has not yet completed the wording of the resolution, which must be formally submitted by mid-July.
Netanyahu's reported remarks were made over the past week to four US and European officials who were trying to convince him to accept US President Barack Obama's proposal for talks to be based on the 1967 lines as a way of heading off a Palestinian bid to seek UN recognition of their state.
His comments were made in a conversation last week with senior US adviser Dennis Ross and acting US Middle East envoy David Hale, and again in talks with Ashton and Mideast Quartet envoy Tony Blair on Sunday, Maariv said, quoting two separate sources.
But Netanyahu also laid down a condition for accepting such parameters, they said: that the Palestinians recognise Israel as a Jewish state and that they agree that all refugees would return to a future Palestinian state and not to Israel.
European diplomatic sources told the paper that Ashton had been encouraged by the meeting. "This is the first time that she was encouraged after talking to him," they said.
Netanyahu's office refused to comment on the report.
Israel fears such that the Palestinian bid at the UN could spark what has been described as a "diplomatic tsunami" against the Jewish state.
Ashton is one of many international figures working to head off potentially volatile developments if the issue goes to a vote, and she has been working to convene an urgent session of the Middle East diplomatic Quartet in the coming weeks, diplomatic sources in Brussels told AFP.
On June 10, she sent a letter to her fellow Quartet principals in Washington, Moscow and at the United Nations, saying it was critical the Quartet make a gesture before the summer in order to calm "a volatile situation" and said it was "no time for unilateral moves."
"My letter was a manifestation of an awful lot of work to try and get the Quartet principals together in order that we can try and put that work that's been going on to good effect," she said.
A move by the Quartet "might be able to persuade the parties that there is enough support to get back into negotiations," she explained.
"One of the most critical parts is not only understanding why the key issues matter so much to each, but them feeling that if they take the risk of being in negotiations, that the international community will stand with them both and see that through," she said.
Envoys from the Quartet will meet in Brussels on Friday as part of "regular consultations" and examine the possibility of calling a principals meeting, Ashton's office said on Thursday.
Europe has been particularly active in pushing for a resumption of talks, with France proposing to host a Middle East conference in Paris next month despite reservations expressed by the United States and Israel.
But the Palestinian envoy to France on Thursday said he did not believe it would happen.
"I myself doubt that this conference will take place because I doubt that the Israelis will accept the French offer," Hael al-Fahum told reporters.
Direct talks between Israel and the Palestinians collapsed in autumn 2010 in an intractable spat over settlement building, prompting a flurry of international efforts to haul them both back into talks to end the conflict.
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