By Yana Dlugy
Israeli and Palestinian leaders headed on Monday for a summit with US President Barack Obama, with both sides sceptical the "photo-up" encounter will lead to a resumption of stalled peace talks.
The US leader is to hold a three-way meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas on Tuesday on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York.
Officials are keeping expectations low ahead of the meeting, which was called by Washington even though weeks of shuttle diplomacy by its Middle East envoy George Mitchell failed to produce a breakthrough on restarting talks.
'Conditions are not ripe for a formal relaunch of negotiations' "Conditions are not ripe for a formal relaunch of negotiations," Israeli government secretary Zvi Herzog told army radio, calling Tuesday's meeting simply "a step in the right direction."
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The comments were an echo of those made by a senior Palestinian Authority official on Saturday after he confirmed that Abbas would attend the talks.
"It will be a formal meeting because we don't want to disappoint the American administration which wants it held," the official said on condition of anonymity. "That does not mean a resumption of peace talks."
Israeli media were more biting, with the mass-selling Yediot Aharonot daily calling it a "joke" and the Maariv newspaper describing it as "no more than a photo-op."
Both Israel and the Palestinians have accused each other of scuppering the efforts made by Mitchell in frantic shuttle diplomacy last week to find a formula under which the two sides could agree to resume talks suspended in late December.
'It is the Palestinian Authority that is preventing such a meeting' The main sticking point is the issue of Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank which are home to half a million Israelis but considered illegal by the international community and one of the main hurdles to any peace deal.
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