THE TELEGRAPH: Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, has refused to buckle to US pressure to scrap a Jewish building project in East Jerusalem in a crucial telephone conversation with America's top diplomat.
Mr Netanyahu ceded little ground to Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, as he finally responded to a series of conditions she set out to end a 10-day standoff between Israel and its superpower patron.
The Israeli leader gambled that the Obama administration had lost its appetite for a prolonged diplomatic row by accepting just one of Mrs Clinton's demands in full as he agreed to make a "confidence-building" gesture to the Palestinians.
He refused to cancel construction of 1,600 settler homes which lie at the heart of the crisis, offering instead to delay their construction - a proposal understood already to have been made and rejected.
A freeze on further settlement building in East Jerusalem, captured by Israel in 1967, was also ruled out. Instead, he reportedly proposed to continue building, but in secret.
In keeping with a decision to soften the tone of US rhetoric, Mrs Clinton was guarded in her response, neither welcoming nor dismissing Mr Netanyahu's suggestions.
"What I heard from the prime minister in response to the requests we made was useful and productive," she said, speaking after a meeting of the Middle East Quartet negotiating group in Moscow.
The Quartet - which comprises the United States, the United Nations, Russia and the European Union - however joined Mrs Clinton in forcefully condemning Israel's construction plans. >>> Adrian Blomfield in Jerusalem and Andrew Osborn in Moscow | Friday, March 19, 2010
