Jordan king tells Peres settlements hinder peace

Jordan's King Abdullah II told visiting Israeli President Shimon Peres on Monday that Israel's settlement building on Palestinian land posed a "serious obstacle" to peace efforts, the palace said. "Israel must stop unilateral measures, particularly settlement building which is a serious obstacle to peace efforts," the king told Peres, who was in Amman on a brief and previously unannounced visit. The king and Peres, whose countries signed a 1994 peace treaty, discussed the "means to revive Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations and remove obstacles facing them in line with a two-state solution," the palace added. "The Israeli president talked about efforts that Israel can make in the coming phase to build trust with the Palestinian Authority," it said without elaborating. A statement from Peres's office said that the two also "exchanged assessments on the latest developments in our region" and discussed bilateral issues. It said that before leaving for Amman Peres met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and they talked about "the importance of strengthening the good strategic ties between Israel and Jordan." The statement described the Amman meeting as "warm, open and friendly" and said that the king and Peres agreed "to continue talks in the near future." The meeting comes a week after the king held talks in Ramallah with Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas on his first visit to the West Bank in more than a decade. Israeli-Palestinian talks came to a halt in September 2010 when Israel ended a moratorium on construction in the occupied territories. Peres's trip provoked the ire of Jordan's opposition Islamists. "The visit by this criminal who has Arab blood on his hands provokes the feelings of Jordanians who are dismayed by Israel's aggression and madness," Murad Adaileh, in charge of Palestinian affairs at the powerful Islamic Action Front (IAF), said in a statement. "He is not welcome in the kingdom, particularly as efforts to revive the already dead peace process will fail," he said, urging people in the region to "refuse to give in to the enemy." The IAF is the political arm of the country's Muslim Brotherhood.