United States President Barack Obama held talks with Israeli President Shimon Peres on Tuesday in hopes of finding ways to boost Middle East peace efforts, despite a new settlement move in Jerusalem.
Peres, a veteran statesman and Nobel laureate whose position is largely ceremonial, opened a meeting with Obama in the Oval Office of the White House. They were due to hold a late working lunch.
“The two presidents will discuss events in the Middle East and around the world and they will discuss, obviously, efforts that need to be taken towards finding a compromise in the Middle East peace process,” White House spokesperson Jay Carney told reporters ahead of the meeting.
Obama has often had rocky relations with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a right-leaning leader and former political foe of Peres, over US efforts to encourage a permanent peace deal with the Palestinians.
On the eve of the talks between Peres and Obama, the Jerusalem city council approved the construction of 942 new homes in Gilo, a settlement neighbourhood in the city’s mostly Arab eastern sector, officials said.
In March 2010, during a visit to Israel by Vice President Joe Biden, the interior ministry announced a plan to build 1 600 settler homes in an Orthodox Jewish part of east Jerusalem in what some saw as a slap in the face to Obama’s efforts. — AFP