Abbas, left, is in Washington and will meet Obama on Thursday [AFP]

Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, reiterated the US stance ahead of a meeting in Washington on Thursday between Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian leader, and the US president.

"President [Barack] Obama and I are committed to a comprehensive peace in the Middle East and to a two-state solution," Clinton said.

Clinton said Obama "was very clear" when Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, visited the White House last week, that "he wants to see a stop to settlements. Not some settlements, not outposts, not natural growth exceptions".

Abbas visit

"We think it is in the best interest of the effort that we are engaged in, that settlement expansion cease," Clinton said.

"That is our position, that is what we have communicated very clearly not only to the Israelis but to the Palestinians and others. And we intend to press that point," she said.

But an Israeli government spokesman on Thursday said settlement activity would continue as usual.

"Normal life" will be allowed in settlements in the occupied West Bank, Mark Regev said, using a euphemism  for continuing construction to accommodate population growth. 

The fate of settlements "will be determined in final status negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians and in the interim, normal life must be allowed to continue in those communities," he said.

Abbas, who met Clinton for dinner on Wednesday, has ruled out restarting long-stalled peace talks until Israel halts all settlement activity.

The Palestinians say settlements built on land Israel occupied in the 1967 Middle East war and deemed illegal internationally, could deny them a viable and contiguous state and expansion activities undermine efforts to negotiate a peace agreement.

'Natural growth'

Less than a week after meeting Obama, aides quoted Netanyahu as telling his cabinet that while he did not intend to build new settlements, "it makes no sense to ask us not to answer to the needs of natural growth and to stop all construction".

Outposts are smaller settlements, often just a group of trailers inhabited by a few dozen people, built without Israeli government authorisation but often given infrastructural support by the government.

Israeli media reported earlier in the week that Netanyahu was willing to tear down outposts in the occupied West Bank in return for US backing on its stance on Iran.

Half a million Israeli setters live in more than 100 settlements that Israel has built since its 1967 occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, territory in which close to three million Palestinians live.

Netanyahu speech

Under the US-backed 2003 "road map" peace plan, Israel is supposed to end all settlement activity, including natural growth, while the Palestinian Authority is supposed to crack down on armed groups who seek to attack Israelis.

The two sides accuse each other of not fulfiling its obligations under the plan.

Delivering a policy speech in parliament on Wednesday, Netanyahu pledged to honour Israel's international agreements and said the Palestinians must also be pressed to meet their commitments.

"We want an end to the conflict and we want reciprocity in the demands made of both sides, and in carrying them out," Netanyahu said.

The Israeli leader has not publicly backed a two-state solution and has proposed shifting the focus of suspended talks with the Palestinians from difficult territorial issues to improving economic, security and political relations.

But Abbas has said Netanyahu must accept the principle of Palestinian statehood before negotiations can resume.

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