Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday he was seeking a formula to enable renewed talks with the Palestinians while permitting Jewish settlers to "live normal lives", Reuters reported
Israel has so far resisted U.S. President Barack Obama's calls to freeze settlement building so that peace talks may resume, and the dispute has led to a rare rift in the Jewish state's relations with Washington.
Netanyahu is due to meet Washington's envoy, George Mitchell, Wednesday in London, where the Israeli leader held talks Tuesday with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
Brown, addressing reporters after his hour-long meeting with Netanyahu, voiced support for Obama's efforts to renew stalled Israeli-Palestinian talks, and Washington's call for a settlement freeze.
The British leader called the enclaves built in the occupied West Bank "a barrier to a two-state solution" and said an Israeli building freeze could also move the Jewish state closer to its goal of normalizing ties with the Arab world.
About half a million Israelis live in settlements built in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, territory that Palestinians seek for a state and that was captured in a 1967 war.
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