Palestinian Authority chief has met with Arab League chief Amr Moussa during a visit to Cairo over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Speaking to journalists after his meeting with Mahmoud Abbas, Moussa said it was "crucial" to the Mideast peace process that the Zionist regime ceased building settlements on occupied Palestinian territory.

"The issue of settlements is the rock on which everything done at Annapolis can be dashed," said Moussa.

"It is in everybody's best interest to see the peace process succeed and to make progress in the peace process," said Moussa. "The important factor in that progress, an essential factor, is the cessation of settlement activities."

At the US-sponsored Mideast peace conference in Annapolis, late last November, Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert set a 2008 target for a final peace agreement, but attempts to begin negotiations foundered over a Zionist plan to build more than 300 new homes for Jews in east al-Quds.

Palestinians want east al-Quds as their future capital and insisted peace negotiations could not precede until the latest project was cancelled.

The United Nations does not recognize Israeli sovereignty over all of al-Quds.

The Palestinians want a halt to all Israeli construction in East al-Quds and the West Bank.

The Zionist regime committed to freeze all construction in West Bank settlements under the recently revived 2003 "road map" peace plan, but it has never honored that obligation.


MSH/PA