Israeli Vice Prime Minister Silvan Shalom said on Tuesday that the current Israeli government "is fully committed to have a dialogue with Palestinians."

"The Israeli government is fully committed to have a dialogue with Palestinians, a political one as well as an economic one," Shalom told reporters here after his meeting with UN Secretary-general Ban Ki-moon at the UN Headquarters in New York.

"I mentioned to the secretary-general that we established a new ministry that I hold, ministry for regional cooperation, in order to implement full projects with the Palestinians, as well with the moderates of Arab countries," he said.

"We of course were talking about the necessity to resume the negotiations with the Palestinians," Shalom said. During the meeting, he assured Ban of this commitment of the Israeli government headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, reiterating Netanyahu's hope to resume the peace process with the Palestinians in the coming weeks.

"We even formed a new ... committee chaired by the prime minister himself and next Monday, we are going to implement a new project with Palestinians in order to ease the life of the Palestinians," Shalom said. "But it doesn't come instead of having a political dialogue. We would like to have it in parallel."

"We hope that after the visit of (US) President Barack Obama to the Middle East, especially after his speech in Cairo, the day after tomorrow, it will give a positive signal to all sides in the Middle East to sit back to the table and resume negotiations and I'm sure that the Palestinians if (they) are willing to do so, they will find us a real partner towards peace," he added.

"We would like as soon as possible to renew the peace talks between us and the Palestinians," Netanyahu said in mid-May after talks with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak at the Egyptian resort of Sharm-el-Sheikh. "I hope that they will be renewed in the next few weeks."

However, Netanyahu again refused to commit to discussions on an independent Palestinian State, a bedrock principle of international peace efforts to which Israel committed itself under the "roadmap" in 2003. The "roadmap" advocates a "two-state solution," which means the establishment of an independent Palestinian State to live in peace with a secure Israel.

The Israeli-Palestinian negotiations have been stalled since Israel launched its devastating assault on the Gaza Strip in December, leaving at least 1,300 people dead.

Netanyahu on Monday rejected President Obama's demand for a freeze on West Bank Jewish settlement construction, but his government's move to dismantle some squatter camps set off a rampage by Jewish settlers against Palestinians.

Amre Moussa, secretary-general of the League of Arab States, on Friday called upon Israel to put an immediate end to the settlement construction in the West Bank, saying that if Israel goes ahead with the construction, it is impossible to set up an independent Palestinian State.

Moussa told a press conference that as Israel goes on with the settlement construction, the population in the West Bank will change rapidly, making it more unlikely for the international community to carry out the two-state solution.

In another possible diplomatic entanglement, UN investigators on Monday began looking into possible war crimes during Israel's three-week offensive against Gaza's Hamas rulers, even though they failed to secure a promise of cooperation from Israel.

Israeli officials have insisted the investigation, led by veteran war crimes prosecutor Richard Goldstone, would not be objective, citing alleged anti-Israel bias by the UN agency sponsoring the probe.

Earlier on Tuesday, the UN secretary-general renewed his call for Israeli cooperation with the UN investigation team.

(Xinhua News Agency June 3, 2009)