LONDON (AFP) — The Middle East Quartet called Friday on Israel to freeze the construction of further settlements in the West Bank, while voicing deep concern over the Gaza Strip due to an Israeli blockade.
In a joint statement issued after talks between the four key powers in London, they also urged Arab states Friday to make good on pledges to help the Palestinians.
"The Quartet ... called on Israel to freeze all settlement activity including natural growth, and to dismantle outposts erected since March 2001," they said, in a statement quoted by UN chief Ban Ki-moon.
"The Quartet called for continued emergency and humanitarian assistance and the provision of essential services to Gaza without obstruction," the statement added.
Former British prime minister Tony Blair, who now heads the Quartet, said the situation in Gaza was "terrible."
Before the London talks, aid agencies had urged the Quartet to use the London meeting to press Israel to end its blockade of Gaza.
The agencies including Oxfam urged the grouping "to end its complacency by putting the highest diplomatic pressure on the Israeli government to lift the blockade on Gaza."
Warning of "an impending humanitarian crisis," they added that the Israeli stranglehold on the sliver of land "has made life for ordinary people intolerable" and made it near impossible for aid agencies to work there.
On the Arab states, the four powers -- the United Nations, the United States, Russia and the European Union -- urged donor states to follow through on commitments to the Palestinians made at a Paris conference in December 2007.
"The Quartet encouraged the Arab states to fulfil both their political and financial roles in support of the Annapolis process," he said, citing a statement agreed by the four powers.
The comments echoed remarks by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, speaking on the eve of the talks.
Arab "states that have resources ought to be looking not for how little they can do but how much they can do," she told reporters accompanying her en route to London.
Rice was due to travel on from London to Jerusalem and the West Bank, to try to advance stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, ahead of a visit to the region by President George W. Bush later in the month.
Bush -- who said earlier this week that he remained hopeful of a Middle East peace deal before he leaves office in January -- will visit Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt from May 13 to 18.
The Quartet talks were to be followed by separate meetings on Iran.
A six-power grouping comprising the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany were to discuss the next steps in seeking to persuade Tehran to rein in its disputed nuclear programme.
Specifically the ministers are working on a joint proposal aimed at bringing Tehran back to the negotiating table and in line with UN resolutions. Talks in Shanghai in mid-April failed to reach agreement.
"We will take a look again at what we have offered the Iranians," Rice told reporters ahead of the talks.
"But I just want to say I don't see any evidence that the Iranians appear to be interested in that track," she said, adding that she did not expect any notable results from Friday's meeting.
She continued: "I don't think the problem is the package. I think the problem is Iranian will."
The West fears Iran wants to use its nuclear programme to make an atomic weapon but Iran insists the drive is peaceful and solely aimed at providing energy for a growing population.
Tehran has been hit by three sets of UN Security Council sanctions, while the United States has also pressured European firms and banks to reduce their dealings with Iran.
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