"I spoke with Defence Minister Ehud Barak twice over recent weeks," Abbas told Israel's left-leaning Haaretz daily.
"I suggested to him three weeks ago that Israel freeze all settlement construction for six months, including in east Jerusalem, without declaring it, just carrying it out in practice.
"During this time, we can return to the negotiating table and perhaps even achieve a final-status agreement. I have yet to receive an answer," the moderate Western-backed president said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last month announced a 10-month construction freeze in Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank in the hope it would help kick-start peace talks suspended nearly a year ago.
But the Palestinians have rejected the move, saying it fell far short of their demand for a complete halt of settlement activity in the whole West Bank, including annexed east Jerusalem.
Netanyahu's moratorium does not include east Jerusalem or the 3,000 homes already under construction in the West Bank, or public buildings.
In the interview, Abbas once again accused Israel of violating the 2003 roadmap agreement adopted by the international community, which calls on the Jewish state to freeze settlements.
"The roadmap makes demands of all parties. We were required to stop terror attacks, recognise Israel and even stop incitement. So come and see what we did," Abbas said.
"They said there is a problem with incitement in speeches in mosques during Friday prayers. Today there is no more incitement at any mosque... The security situation in the West Bank is excellent."
The most recent round of peace talks between the two sides was suspended nearly a year ago at the start of Israel's war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Israeli police officer beaten, injured by settlersIt was the most serious clash between settlers and authorities since the building restrictions were imposed last month. Settlers have vowed to defy the orders and have confronted government inspectors, scuffling with them.
Tuesday's incident went beyond the usual pushing and shoving.
Police spokesman Gil Elhadad said about 100 settlers, most of them teenagers, burned tires and blocked the entrance to the settlement of Tsofit, in the northern part of the West Bank near the line with Israel. He said some of them jumped the police officer and beat her, breaking several ribs. She was taken to a hospital for treatment of serious injuries, he said. He did not give her name or age.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared the 10-month moratorium on construction of new housing in the West Bank as a gesture to the Palestinians, hoping they would resume peace negotiations.
However, Palestinian leaders rejected the move because it did not include east Jerusalem and allowed completion of about 3,000 housing units already under construction as well as putting up new public buildings, like schools and synagogues, in the settlements.
In the West Bank city of Ramallah, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas told the PLO central council that Palestinians would not participate in peace negotiations until Israel fully freezes Israeli settlement building and agrees to recognize all areas captured in the 1967 Mideast war as the basis for a Palestinian state, referring to the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem.
"If there is a total freeze of settlement activity and recognition of 1967 borders, yes, we will go to negotiations," Abbas said.
Israel's position is that issues like settlements and borders should be discussed in negotiations, not as preconditions.
Also Tuesday, a Palestinian human rights group listed 116 Hamas activists who were arrested in the West Bank this week by the government dominated by the rival Fatah movement.
Jaber Wishah of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights said the Hamas members were detained in an attempt to pre-empt celebrations of Hamas' 22nd anniversary, marked on Monday with a huge rally in Gaza City.
Palestinian Authority police spokesman Adnan Damiri said the Hamas members were only summoned and warned that Hamas celebrations were "illegal."
The West Bank and Gaza have been ruled by rival governments since Hamas expelled forces loyal to Abbas from Gaza in 2007.
While both Hamas and Fatah frequently detain and abuse each other's members, rarely have so many people been arrested at once.
A Hamas official in the West Bank, who requested anonymity fearing arrest, said some detainees were released Tuesday, but he did not know how many.
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US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Israel's announcement "helps move forward toward resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict," and reiterated what she called "unwavering" US support for a two-state solution.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered to freeze new building projects in the occupied West Bank for 10 months, but excluded the construction of public buildings and all construction within mostly Arab east Jerusalem.
The Palestinians immediately rejected the offer as insufficient.
They have demanded east Jerusalem -- which Israel occupied and annexed following the 1967 Six-Day War in a move not recognized by the international community -- as the capital of their future state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
"Netanyahu did not advance any formula for the relaunching of negotiations," chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat told AFP.
Clinton's top aides insisted that while President Barack Obama's administration stands by its calls for a full settlement freeze in both in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, the Israeli move is "significant."
In a press conference immediately after Clinton's written statement was released, US Middle East envoy George Mitchell said the Israeli move could pave the way for a resumption of peace talks suspended for nearly a year.
"It falls short of a full settlement freeze, but it is more than any Israeli government has done before, and can help move toward agreement between the parties," Mitchell told reporters.
He avoided using the word "unprecedented," after Clinton infuriated the Palestinians by using it on October 31 to describe Netanyahu's offer to "restrict" but not freeze settlement building on the West Bank.
Mitchell said the temporary freeze is "significant" and will "have an impact on the ground," as he highlighted the unprecedented nature of the Israeli government's move.
Some public buildings like synagogues and schools within settlements will be exempted, while buildings already under construction will be completed, he acknowledged.
But overall construction will decline, said Mitchell, a former troubleshooter in the Northern Ireland peace process.
"So implementation of the moratorium could mean much less settlement construction than would occur if there is no moratorium," he said.
Clinton stressed the need to relaunch talks for a Palestinian state living alongside a secure Israel -- which were suspended when Israel launched a deadly 22-day offensive against Hamas militants in Gaza that ended in January.
"Let me say to all the people of the region and world: our commitment to achieving a solution with two states living side by side in peace and security is unwavering," the chief US diplomat said.
Analysts like former US negotiator Aaron David Miller have accused the Obama administration of getting bogged down in a vain bid to halt Israeli settlements instead of using its muscle to solve core issues like borders, refugees and Jerusalem.
Since taking office 10 months ago, the administration has put high priority on resolving the conflict as part of a broader effort to boost US national security by improving ties with Arab and Muslim nations.
The probe into a possible friendly fire incident further aggravates already strained relations between Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the international community, which holds his enfeebled government partly responsible for rising instability.
After enduring a drumbeat of criticism from world leaders in recent days, the Afghan government struck back on Saturday, saying it viewed a U.N. official's prescription for ridding the country of corruption and warlords as an infringement on its national sovereignty.
The airstrike occurred Friday during heavy fighting in Badghis province, a remote area that borders Turkmenistan. Two days earlier, two American paratroopers disappeared there while trying to recover airdropped supplies that had fallen into a river. Fighting broke out between members of a search team and Taliban insurgents, the U.S. military said.
Eight Afghans — four soldiers, three policemen and an interpreter — were killed. Seventeen Afghan troops, including soldiers and police, five American soldiers and another Afghan interpreter were wounded, the U.S. said.
Afghanistan's Defense Ministry said the deaths and injuries likely happened "during an air attack by NATO forces" on a joint U.S.-Afghan base.
U.S. officials would not confirm the account, but said in a statement that a joint investigation was under way to determine whether any of the casualties were caused by NATO "close air support."
The top U.S. and NATO commander, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, has ordered commanders to use airpower sparingly to minimize civilian casualties, which threaten to undermine Afghan support for the war against the Taliban. However, commanders are free to call in airpower to defend themselves against Taliban attack.
Although the U.N. says most civilian casualties have been at the hands of militants, deaths of men, women and children in NATO airstrikes have raised tensions between Karzai's government and the U.S.-led coalition — already running high because of widespread corruption and drug trafficking that have proliferated in the last four years.
Since a presidential election marred by fraud returned Karzai to power, a host of international figures, including President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, have called on the Afghan leader to take concrete steps to clean up his government.
On Friday, Kai Eide, head of the U.N. mission in Afghanistan, lectured the Karzai government, saying "we can't afford any longer a situation where warlords and power brokers play their own games."
"We have to have a political landscape here that draws the country in the same direction, which is in the direction of significant reform," Eide said.
Eide said members of Karzai's new government should be vetted not just for ties to insurgent groups but also for links to criminal or drug activity. Karzai's running mate, a former Tajik warlord, has repeatedly denied allegations that he has been involved in drug smuggling.
His remarks drew a sharp rebuke Saturday from the Afghan Foreign Ministry, which accused Eide and others of interfering in the makeup of the new Karzai government.
"Over the last few days some political and diplomatic circles and propaganda agencies of certain foreign countries have intervened in Afghanistan's internal affairs by issuing instructions concerning the composition of Afghan government organs and political policy of Afghanistan," the ministry said. "Such instructions have violated respect for Afghanistan's national sovereignty."
Karzai promised in his first speech after his victory that he would work to eliminate corruption, but did not give any specific proposals.
During an interview with The Associated Press, Foreign Ministry spokesman Ahmad Zahir Faqiri called the U.N. official's comments "unfair."
"The elected president of Afghanistan, after his re-election, made some remarks to say he is committed to combatting corruption, to expand the rule of law," Faqiri said. "These were very important points."
He said details about the anti-corruption measures would be made public along with Cabinet appointments in about two or three weeks.
Elsewhere, the deputy governor of the southern province of Zabul, Ali Khail, said NATO forces raided an office of the Afghan Red Crescent in the city of Qalat early Saturday, killing a security guard and arresting three local Red Crescent employees. NATO issued a statement saying coalition forces killed a militant and arrested a few other suspected militants, including someone who was helping insurgents transport weapons and bomb-making materials to the area.
Also, in Zabul province, Afghan and U.S. troops killed 18 militants, said Gen. Sher Mohammad Zazai, regional corps commander for the Afghan army. There were no U.S. or Afghan casualties, he said, adding that they had recovered the bodies of all 18 dead militants.
A roadside bomb, meanwhile, killed three Afghan soldiers and wounded one in the southern province of Helmand, scene of fierce fighting last summer, Zazai said.
