The Palestinian National Authority (PNA) on Saturday rejected a US call for starting immediate talks with Israel on the borders of a future Palestinian state.

The call, made Friday by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, "is unacceptable since it doesn't include a halt of ( Israeli) settlement and a timetable for the negotiations," Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, told Xinhua.

Clinton said the United States is working with Israeli and Palestinian authorities, as well as Arab states to re-launch the peace talks "as soon as possible and without preconditions."

But Erekat added that Clinton "neglected the Arab position" that Israel must halt the building of settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and endorse the two-state solution.

"How we should negotiate on the Palestinian state's boundaries while the Israeli bulldozers and settlements eat up the land that we want to build our state on," Erekat wondered. "The settlement expansions must stop to give a chance for the negotiations to succeed."

Erekat stressed that the negotiations must also restart from the point they left off during the term of former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

(Xinhua News Agency January 9, 2010)