Region

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Four Israeli soldiers were wounded by a roadside bomb on the occupied Golan Heights Tuesday, prompting artillery fire into Syria and a sharp warning that Israel would act forcefully to defend itself.

The army said one of the soldiers was severely wounded in what was the third such incident in two weeks along Israel’s northern frontier, prompting a blunt warning from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“Recently the border with Syria has filled with jihadists and Hizbollah elements, which represents a new threat for the state of Israel,” he said, referring to Lebanon’s powerful Shiite movement, which is fighting alongside Syrian President Bashar Assad’s troops.

Netanyahu said the ceasefire line in the Golan had remained largely calm, despite the three-year civil war raging in Syria, but that Israel would not hesitate to act in self-defence.

“We will act forcefully to preserve Israel’s security,” he warned.

Although there was no immediate claim of responsibility, analysts pointed to similarities with an explosion last week targeting troops along the Lebanese border, which was blamed on Hizbollah, and a similar attempt in the Golan on
March 5.

An Israeli security source said Tuesday’s incident targeted a patrol driving along the ceasefire line near the Druze town of Majdal Shams.

“The soldiers were in a jeep near the fence and they saw something suspicious, so they got out and that’s when the device went off,” the source told AFP.

The Israeli army confirmed four soldiers had been wounded by an explosive device, prompting troops to open fire on Syrian military positions.

“We view the Syrian army as responsible for this incident... this indicates our response to the attack,” military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner told reporters.

The incident came four days after the blast targeting Israeli troops on the Lebanese border, very close to Syria, which prompted Israel to shell Hizbollah positions over the border.

A Lebanese security source said 10 Israeli rockets had slammed into an uninhabited border area.

On March 5, the Israeli army said troops on the Golan had opened fire on Hizbollah members as they tried to plant a bomb near the ceasefire line. It claimed to have struck the two fighters but did not say what weapon it used or whether they died.

Hizbollah did not comment on the incident.

Analysts linked the escalation in border tensions to an air strike on February 24 which targeted a Hizbollah position in Lebanon, close to the Syrian border, which the Shiite group blamed on Israel.

If confirmed, it would be the first Israeli attack against Hizbollah inside Lebanon since the 2006 war, which killed more than 1,200 people in Lebanon, mostly civilians, and some 160 Israelis, mostly soldiers.

Hizbollah has vowed to respond to the air strike.

“Israel has assessed that Hizbollah would attempt to find a way to express its displeasure, to put it mildly,” wrote defence expert Alex Fishman in Israel’s Yediot Aharonot newspaper earlier this week.

He said last week’s attack was “a message” to Israel that it could not attack Hizbollah positions with impunity, saying: “You overdid it. When you bomb our weapons convoys in Syria, you are dealing with the Syrians. In Lebanon, you’re dealing with us.”

VIENNA — Iran and six world powers sought on Tuesday to make headway towards resolving their decade-old nuclear dispute, with Western officials expressing hope talks would not be further complicated by the Ukraine crisis.

So far, diplomats said, there is little sign that the worst East-West confrontation since the Cold War would undermine the quest for a deal over Iran’s atomic activity and avert the threat of a Middle East war.

The March 18-19 meeting between Iran and the powers — the United States, Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany — began a day after Washington and the European Union imposed sanctions on Russian officials over events in Crimea.

“I haven’t seen any negative effect,” Michael Mann, a spokesman for EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton who coordinates the talks on behalf of the six nations, told reporters. “We continue our work in a unified fashion”.

Last week, a senior US official expressed the hope that the escalating crisis would not harm attempts to secure a nuclear deal with Tehran.

But that unity among the powers on Iran may still be tested in the meeting of their chief negotiators on the issue in the Austrian capital Vienna, with the four Western states and Russia at loggerheads over the future of Ukraine.

Russia and the West have in the past differed on how best to deal with Iran, with Moscow generally enjoying warmer ties with the Islamic republic and suggesting Western fears about any nuclear military aims by Tehran are overblown.

The United States and European Union have imposed sanctions including asset freezes and travel bans on some senior Russian and Ukrainian officials after Crimea applied to join Russia on Monday following a secession referendum.

As in previous meetings, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov represented Russia at the talks which are likely to end late on Wednesday.

Despite a concerted push to end the decade-old nuclear dispute after a relative moderate, Hassan Rouhani, was elected president last year on a platform to end Iran’s international isolation, big power divisions have re-emerged.

Russia and China only reluctantly supported four rounds of UN sanctions against Iran over its nuclear programme between 2006 and 2010, and condemned subsequent US and European sanctions that targeted the country’s lifeline oil exports.

Iranian media said Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif had cancelled a customary pre-talks dinner with Ashton on Monday evening. The official IRNA news agency said it was because of Ashton’s “undiplomatic” behaviour, an apparent reference to her meeting Iranian human rights activists during her first visit to Tehran 10 days ago.

US senators outline ‘core principles’ for Iran deal

Iran has long denied accusations from Western powers and Israel that it has sought to develop the capability to produce atomic weapons under the cover of its declared civilian nuclear energy programme.

In November, Iran and the six powers struck an interim deal under which Tehran has since shelved higher-grade uranium enrichment — a potential path to atomic bombs — and obtained modest relief from punitive economic sanctions in return.

That six-month pact was designed to buy time for hammering out a final settlement by a July deadline, under which the West wants Iran to significantly scale back its nuclear programme to deny it the capability to devise a nuclear weapon any time soon.

Zarif, who leads Tehran’s delegation, said he expects a trickier round of talks this week than the previous meeting in mid-February as the two sides try to iron out details such as Iran’s Arak heavy water reactor and levels of uranium enrichment.

“Today, enrichment was the main subject and tomorrow Arak will be discussed,” a member of the Iranian delegation told Reuters.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has granted the Iranian nuclear team “carte blanche” to provide guarantees to the West that the country’s nuclear programme is peaceful, said a senior Iranian official who asked not to be named.

“But the red line is closure of any nuclear site and stopping enrichment,” the official said. “The talks are becoming more and more difficult because hardliners in Iran are watching any outcome very closely.”

He was alluding to powerful conservatives in Iran’s security and clerical establishments deeply suspicious of Rouhani’s diplomatic opening to the West.

In Washington, a bi-partisan group of 83 US senators — a vast majority of the US legislature’s 100-member upper house — wrote to President Barack Obama on Tuesday, outlining necessary “core principles” for a final agreement with Tehran.

The letter says Iran should abandon the Arak reactor and its Fordow enrichment plant, though it does not mention the much larger underground uranium enrichment facility at Natanz.

The senators also say Iran should not be allowed to circumvent sanctions during the negotiations and urges the administration to deal with sanctions violators harshly.

“Most importantly, Iran must clearly understand the consequences of failing to reach an acceptable final agreement,” the senators told Obama.

“We must signal unequivocally to Iran that rejecting negotiations and continuing its nuclear weapon programme will lead to much more dramatic sanctions, including further limitations on Iran’s exports of crude oil and petroleum products.”

The letter was spearheaded by Democratic senators Robert Menendez, Charles Schumer and Christopher Coons, and Republicans Lindsey Graham, Mark Kirk and Kelly Ayotte. The letter was sent out by the office of Menendez, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

GENEVA — UN investigators said on Tuesday they had expanded their list of suspected war criminals from both sides in Syria’s civil war and the evidence was solid enough to prepare any indictment.

The UN inquiry has identified individuals, military units and security agencies as well as insurgent groups suspected of committing abuses such as torture and bombing civilian areas, it said in its report to the United Nations Human Rights Council.

Some 20 investigators have carried out 2,700 interviews with victims, witnesses and defectors in the region and by Skype in Syria, but have never been allowed to enter the country now in its fourth year of an increasingly sectarian conflict.

However, despite the accumulation of evidence, diplomats say it is unlikely Syria would be referred to the International Criminal Court (ICC) that tries war crimes suspects in The Hague any time soon.

As Syria has not signed the Rome statutes setting up the ICC, the UN Security Council would need to make the referral. Russia, supported by China, has shielded its ally Syria throughout the war, vetoing three UN resolutions that would have condemned President Bashar  Assad’s government and threatened it with possible sanctions.

“We do not lack information on crimes or even on perpetrators. What we lack is a means by which to achieve justice and accountability but this is not in our powers,” Paulo Pinheiro, the chairman of the UN commission of inquiry on Syria, told a news conference.

The commission said the period of January 20 to March 10 was characterised by escalating hostilities between insurgent groups throughout northern and northeastern provinces as Islamist rebel strongholds came under attack.

Government forces have dropped barrel bombs on Aleppo and other cities, causing extensive civilian casualties in areas with no clear military target, and severely tortured detainees.

The mostly Sunni Muslim insurgents seeking to topple Assad, whose minority Alawite sect is an offshoot of Shiite Islam, have used car and suicide bombs targeting civilian areas — also violations of international law, the commission said.

Fighters from Al Qaeda splinter group the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, also known as ISIS, executed detainees, including civilians, and captured soldiers, in Aleppo, Idlib and Al Raqqa before coming under attack by other armed groups such as the Islamic Front, it said.

Confidential lists

Four confidential lists of suspects have been drawn up, including the names of those responsible for hostage-taking, torture and execution, Pinheiro said.

“It also contains names of the heads of intelligence branches and detention facilities where detainees are tortured, names of military commanders who target civilians, airports from which barrel bomb attacks are planned and executed, and armed groups involved in attacking and displacing civilians,” he said.

Carla del Ponte, a former UN war crimes prosecutor who is on the inquiry, said the investigators had gathered “objective evidence” including photographs and documents that could used by a prosecutor for any future ICC case.

“This commission has collected a lot of evidence that can be used tomorrow to prepare an indictment,” she said.

“Referral to justice is an urgent, extremely urgent need, but as you know the Security Council cannot take the decision to refer to the ICC because of the veto.”

Photos published by the Guardian newspaper in January appeared to confirm their previous findings on the government’s systematic torture of detainees, the UN investigators said.

“I must assure you that the commission has taken these allegations very seriously, and we are investigating the evidence of torture, killing and starvation of detainees related to this case,” Pinheiro added.

The independent team was set up in September 2011, months after the start of the revolt in which at least 140,000 people have been killed.

It has called repeatedly for the Security Council to refer Syria to the ICC prosecutor, a call endorsed again by Britain, the European Union, France and Switzerland on Tuesday.

Syrian Ambassador Faysal Khabbaz Hamoui denounced the commission, in comments echoed by its ally Iran. “Referral to the ICC is a politicised and unlawful step as there are national judicial mechanisms available in Syria,” he said.

Khabbaz Hamoui accused the commission of working for the political agendas of countries that are supporting the rebels — naming the United States, Qatar, Turkey and Saudi Arabia.

SANAA — Shiite rebels have begun withdrawing from positions they seized near the Yemeni capital under a truce agreed with armed tribesmen allied with the influential Sunni Al Islah (reform) Party, officials say.

But some rebel fighters, known as Ansarullah or Huthis, are refusing to evacuate positions they won after months of deadly battles despite an ultimatum by the army, tribal and military sources say.

The army meanwhile has deployed to prevent those who have left from returning to their positions, the military says.

President Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi and Yemen’s main parties agreed last month to transform the unrest-riven country into a six-region federation as part of a political transition.

The rebels, whose northern region lacks any significant resources or access to the coast, believe the agreement will divide Yemen into rich and poor regions and have been trying to enlarge their zone of influence by pushing out from the mountains to areas closer to Sanaa.

As they advanced they seized areas in the northern province of Omran, leaving more than 150 people dead and overrunning the home base of the Al Ahmar clan which heads the powerful Hashid tribal confederation.

They then advanced to areas located only 15 kilometres from the capital.

Military sources said their objective was to capture Omran city and, from there, lay siege to Sanaa.

Their advance however was halted when the army and tribesmen joined forces and the rebels last week signed a truce with the tribesmen.

However implementation of the truce, which commits them to a ceasefire and to withdrawing their fighters from positions near Sanaa, has been slow.

MOGADISHU — Somalia’s Al Qaeda linked Al Shebab attacked a hotel crowded with army officers in a southern town days after African Union troops celebrated its capture from the Islamists, security officials said Tuesday.

A suicide bomber rammed a car packed full of explosives into the hotel, with gunmen then attacking, killing at least eight people, residents said.

The attack is the latest by the Shebab, launched in apparent retaliation to a new offensive to root them out of the troubled country.

Troops from neighbouring countries, which also face attacks on their own soil, are also fighting Al Shebab in Somalia.

“There was a suicide attack involving terrorists at a hotel in Buulo Burde,” security official Sulieman Adam told AFP, of the attack that took place in the early hours of Tuesday morning.

“Four of the attackers were also killed,” he added.

AU envoy to Somalia, Mahamat Saleh Annadif, condemned the “cowardly attack” and confirmed that both AU troops from Djibouti and Somali troops had been killed, but without giving exact numbers.

AU soldiers, who are fighting Al Shebab alongside Somali government troops, captured the small town from the Islamists last week.

Shebab spokesman Abdiaziz Abu Musab claimed responsibility for the attack, boasting of killing senior officials and telling AFP that Al Shebab were still in control of parts of the town.

Residents said that at least eight people were killed in the attack, but there was no official toll.

“A suicide bomber drove his car packed with explosives into the hotel and there was a big explosion, and then gunfire afterwards,” said resident Moalim Mohamed Adan.

Abdirahman Qalafe, who lives in a nearby village, confirmed the toll of eight, adding he had seen a military helicopter evacuate the wounded.

“The helicopter landed and took around 11 wounded people away,” he said.

The Shebab also claimed responsibility for a car bomb on Monday targeting an AU convoy just outside the Somali capital, boasting of killing seven including three foreigners, although the AU force said there were no casualties.

“These are hit and run attacks... They are losing ground, but are trying to terrorise the people,” AU force spokesman Ali Houmed said.

The UN-backed AU force this month launched a fresh offensive against Shebab bases, with the gunmen largely fleeing ahead of the assault, only to later stage guerrilla attacks.

UN envoy to Somalia Nicholas Kay said the offensive would be “the most significant and geographically extensive military advance” since AU troops started operations in 2007.

But Kay also warned the security situation had “deteriorated” in the last three months.

Shebab fighters once controlled most of southern and central Somalia but withdrew from fixed positions in Mogadishu two years ago.

GAZA CITY — Gaza’s Hamas rulers on Tuesday sharply criticised Egypt’s closure of the Rafah border crossing, saying Cairo’s tightening of restrictions against the Palestinian territory was a “crime against humanity”.

“The Egyptian authorities’ insistence on closing the Rafah crossing and tightening the Gaza blockade... is a crime against humanity by all standards and a crime against the Palestinian people,” Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhum said in a statement.

He condemned “the continuation of this blockade and closing the crossing, all whilst Israel escalates and [increases] aggression.”

“We hold all parties to the blockade of Gaza completely responsible for the consequences of this crime,” he said.

Egypt’s military said on Wednesday that it had destroyed 1,370 smuggling tunnels under its border with the Gaza Strip, as Cairo’s ties remain sour with Hamas.

Ties took a turn for the worse after the military’s July ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi, who belongs to the Muslim Brotherhood, with which Hamas is affiliated.

The tunnels, under the town of Rafah, are used to transfer food, fuel and consumer products into the densely populated Palestinian enclave.

But Hamas and other groups reportedly use their own more secret tunnels to bring in arms and money.

Egypt has also severely restricted access through the border town of Rafah — Gaza’s only gate to the world that is not controlled by Israel — ostensibly for security reasons.

Gaza has been under blockade since 2006, after militants fighters an Israeli soldier in a cross-border raid.

RIYADH — Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al Faisal has warned there will only be rapprochement between Riyadh and Doha when Qatar “modifies” policies at the centre of their spat, a newspaper reported Tuesday.

Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates earlier this month recalled their ambassadors from Qatar after accusing the fellow Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) state of interfering in their internal affairs and of supporting the Muslim Brotherhood.

Qatar is widely seen as a supporter of the Brotherhood and its affiliates, which are banned in most Gulf states.

Saudi Arabia and other Gulf monarchies have long been hostile toward the Brotherhood, fearing that its brand of grassroots activism and political Islam could undermine their authority.

“There will be detente if Qatar modifies the policies that are at the origin of the crisis” with its neighbours, Prince Saud said in a short statement published by pan-Arab newspaper Al Hayat on Tuesday.

The minister added, in response to a question from the newspaper, that there will be “no American mediation to put an end to the crisis”.

President Barack Obama is expected to visit Riyadh at the end of March.

Saudi Arabia at a March 5 meeting of the GCC demanded that Doha shut down the Qatari-owned television station Al Jazeera, an informed source said.

Riyadh at the meeting also called for the closure of two think tanks based in Qatar, the Brookings Doha Centre and the Arab Centre for Research and Policy Studies.

Critics have accused influential network Al Jazeera of biased coverage in favour of the Muslim Brotherhood, and several of its journalists are on trial in Egypt for allegedly supporting the group.

The GCC comprises Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and Oman.

TRIPOLI, Libya — A militia commander controlling Libya’s oil terminals denounced the United States for seizing a tanker that his militia was using to try to export oil in defiance of the country’s central government, saying Tuesday that Washington was siding with Tripoli against the aspirations in the eastern half of the country for greater autonomy.

Ibrahim Jedran is part of a movement demanding autonomy for eastern Libya and last summer his militia took over Libya’s oil facilities in the east. As a result, the country’s exports of its biggest revenue earner have slowed to a trickle. This month, Jedran’s militia loaded a tanker full of more than $30 million-worth of oil at a Mediterranean port it controls and tried to export the oil for sale for the east’s coffers.

On Sunday night, US Navy SEAL commandos captured the tanker, Morning Glory, as it was anchored off the Mediterranean island of Cyprus. The US Navy is now escorting the vessel back to Libya to hand over to the central government.

The tanker episode illustrated the extreme weakness of Libya’s government since the 2011 ouster and death of longtime strongman Moammar Gadhafi. Authorities in Tripoli have almost no authority around the country, the army and police are in disarray, and multiple militias around the country have filled the void, claiming their own power. At the same time, the autonomy movement in the east — a region historically known as Cyrenaica — has gained strength, building on local resentment over years of discrimination and marginalisation of the area by Tripoli.

Speaking in a televised statement aired on his private TV network, the militia commander Jedran said Washington was aligning with the wrong side in the dispute of Libya’s regions. He said the central authorities in Tripoli are dominated by Islamists, who hold sway in parliament, and ignore the aspirations of the east.

“The free world should stand next to the side of truth,” Jedran said. “But today we find a super power declaring piracy.”

Jedran warned the US against handing the tanker and three eastern Libyans on board over to “the criminal militia that rules Tripoli”, adding that “such a dangerous measure would lead to a civil war”.

It is not known who the oil was to be sold to or who owns the tanker. Jedran in his comments said it is owned by the Libyan Company for Oil and Gas, a parallel body created by the autonomy movement in the east to run the oil industry in its area. The Cyrenaica autonomy movement has created a number of administrative bodies in the east that are not recognised by Tripoli.

Jedran claims to have around 20,000 fighters under his command, originally rebel fighters who participated in the eight-month uprising that toppled Gadhafi. After the collapse of Gadhafi’s rule, the fighters were tasked with guarding oil terminals in the east, where most of Libya’s oil infrastructure is located. After long accusing the government of corruption and embezzlement, he moved his forces to take over the terminals, virtually shutting down the country’s previous production of 1.4 billion barrels a day. He demands investigation into corruption allegations in oil sales, fair distribution of oil revenues among the country’s three regions — Tripoli, Cyrenaica and the southern region known as Fezzan — and a return to the 1951 constitution, in which the country was a federation where regions had considerable autonomy.

During the oil tanker crisis, parliament tasked western-based militias to launch an offensive to take back the oil facilities. After some initial clashes with Jedran’s forces, the offensive has been put on hold — but the violence deepened polarisation.

Jedran benefits from the increasing sense among the eastern population that authorities are unable to bring stability to the country, with killings taking place almost on a daily basis in eastern cities. Many militias in the east have Islamic extremist ideologies, and are suspected in frequent attacks on police and the military.

On Tuesday, a slain Christian Iraqi professor was found inside his car in a central city of Sirte, according to state news agency.

The agency LANA reported that security forces found the body of Adison Karkha, a 54-year-old medical school professor. The agency added that motives behind the killing are unknown.

DAMASCUS — Syrian regime forces were on Monday readying an assault on the last rebel-held areas in the Qalamoun Mountains, strategically located on the Lebanese border, after overrunning key opposition bastion Yabrud.

The capture of Yabrud on Sunday by Syrian troops and Lebanese Hizbollah fighters came shortly after the conflict entered its fourth year and marked a significant setback for the rebels as it severs their supply lines from across the border.

It also raised fears of further spillover of the conflict into Lebanon, where Sunni extremists carried out a suicide car bomb attack late Sunday in a Hizbollah-dominated area that killed two members of the Shiite group, including a local official.

A security source in Damascus said the army would soon launch operations “in all areas where terrorists are to be found”, using the regime’s term for rebels battling to end the Assad family’s four-decade rule.

“The aim of the army operation is to entirely secure the border and to close all corridors to Lebanon.”

The fighting along the border has sparked a fresh flight of civilians into Lebanon, which is already hosting nearly a million refugees, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

“So far 150 families have crossed the border since Yabrud fell,” said the UNHCR’s Lisa Abu Khaled.

“NGOs there were on standby so they have handed out food, blankets, etc, and the UN plans to register the arrivals this week.”

Speaking to AFP via the Internet from the Qalamoun mountains, activist Jawad Al Sayed said all civilians were “evacuated” from Yabrud before the town fell, either to areas nearby or to neighbouring Lebanon.

The road, he said, was dangerous, echoing reports from a day earlier that at least six people, including two children, were killed in air strikes as they fled for Lebanon.

“The situation of the civilians is very sad... So we have two options, either to go to Lebanon... or to stay here and resist,” said Sayed.

The car bomb attack was claimed by Al Nusra Front in Lebanon, which described it as a “quick response to the bravado... of the party of Iran [Hizbollah] for their rape of Yabrud”.

On Monday, four rockets launched from across the border with Syria hit eastern Lebanon, injuring one man, according to the Lebanese army.

The Lebanese military was deployed in force on dirt roads and border crossings in the country’s east, in a bid to avert “the infiltration of car bombs and armed men”, said the official National News Agency.

Nineteen Syrian men and two Lebanese were arrested Monday after crossing the border illegally, said the military, adding that the men had in their possession an assault rifle, two pistols, cash and 30 mobile phones.

‘Very difficult battle’ 

The fall of Yabrud came after five months of Syrian army operations in the Qalamoun region, and more than 30 days of heavy aerial bombardment of the town.

An AFP reporter entered Yabrud, north of Damascus, on Sunday after the army declared it had seized full control of the town.

Exhausted Syrian soldiers sat in the streets after seizing the town in fierce clashes with the support of battle-hardened Hizbollah fighters and pro-regime militiamen.

“It was a very difficult battle, possibly the most difficult we have faced,” a soldier who identified himself as Abu Mohammed told AFP in Yabrud’s central square between puffs from a water pipe.

A source close to Hizbollah in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley told AFP that the victory came after a Hizbollah commando raid on Yabrud during which 13 rebel leaders were killed, leaving their forces in disarray.

Among those killed, said the source, was Abu Azzam Al Kuwaiti, a key commander in Al Nusra Front, Al Qaeda’s official Syrian affiliate.

Yabrud was once home to some 30,000 people, including a Christian minority, and had been a rebel bastion since early in the Syrian uprising, which began in March 2011 in the form of peaceful protests.

The town is a strategic prize because of its proximity to the highway and the Lebanese border, across which the mostly Sunni rebels have smuggled fighters and weapons.

Hizbollah’s involvement in Syria has prompted bomb attacks by extremist groups against areas in Lebanon sympathetic to the Shiite movement, killing mostly civilians.

Syria’s three-year conflict has claimed an estimated 146,000 lives and displaced millions of people.

WASHINGTON — US President Barack Obama on Monday told Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas that both he and Israeli leaders must make tough political decisions and take “risks” for peace.

Meeting Obama at the White House, Abbas said Israel’s release of a fourth tranche of Palestinian prisoners by March 29 would show how serious Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was about extending peace talks.

“As I said to Prime Minister Netanyahu when he was here just a few weeks ago, I believe that now is the time .... to embrace this opportunity,” Obama said as he sat side-by-side with Abbas in the Oval Office.

“It is very hard, very challenging. We are going to have to take some tough political decisions and risks if we able to move forward,” Obama said.

The US leader wants Abbas to agree to a US framework to extend peace talks past an end-of April deadline. Little tangible progress has been made in the past seven months.

He said that everyone already understood the shape of an “elusive” peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, saying it would be based on 1967 lines with mutual land swaps.

Abbas did not directly address the Israeli government’s demand for the Palestinians to recognise Israel as a “Jewish” state.

He noted through a translator that the Palestinians had recognised Israel’s legitimacy in 1988 and in “1993 we recognised the state of Israel”.

Abbas also noted the agreement that the Palestinians have with Israel on the release of a fourth batch of prisoners by March 29.

“This will give a very solid impression about the seriousness of these efforts to achieve peace,” Abbas said.

“We don’t have any time to waste. Time is not on our side, especially given the very difficult situation that the Middle East is experiencing and the entire region is facing,” he said.

Israeli ministers said last week that they would have difficulty approving the prisoner release if agreement was not reached to extend the peace talks.

Israel committed to the release of 104 Palestinian prisoners in four tranches when talks were launched in July.

It has so far released 78 of those in three batches.

Ahead of the White House talks, thousands of Palestinians rallied in West Bank cities to show support for Abbas.

“We’re here today to stand up to pressures upon us and make sure President Abbas adheres to his convictions,” said Nasser Eddin Al Shaer, a former Palestinian education minister and member of Fateh’s Islamist rivals Hamas, at a 5,000-strong rally in the northern West Bank city of Nablus.

Obama told Netanyahu when they met at the White House on March 3 that the peace framework cannot be simply a deal agreed by Israel and the United States and then presented to the Palestinians as a take-it-or-leave-it offer.

But officials also privately say that the Palestinians will be required to make concessions on issues like the return of refugees and borders if they are to secure a state at long last.

However, despite intensive diplomacy by Secretary of State John Kerry, the two sides appear to have made little progress since the talks resumed in July after a three-year freeze.

Abbas met Kerry on Sunday for what a senior State Department official said were “frank and productive” discussions.

“We are at a pivotal time in the negotiations and while these issues have decades of history behind them, neither party should let tough political decisions at this stage stand in the way of a lasting peace,” the official said.

The most nettlesome issues in the peace process include the contours of a future Palestinian state, the fate of Jerusalem and Palestinian refugees, Israeli settlements, security and mutual recognition.

The Palestinians want borders based on the lines that preceded the 1967 war, when Israel captured the West Bank, including now-annexed Arab East Jerusalem.

They have also insisted there should be no Israeli troops in their future state.

But Israel wants to retain existing settlements it has built inside occupied Palestinian territory over the past decades. It also wants to maintain a military presence in the Jordan Valley, where the West Bank borders Jordan.