Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu will fly Monday afternoon to New York for the United Nations General Assemblyand a trilateral meeting with Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, arranged by U.S. President Barack Obama.
Netanyahu is also scheduled to meet with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Both meetings are likely to take place before his speech before the U.N. General Assembly, which is set for Thursday. Sources said the prime minister is likely to discuss the nuclear threat to the world posed by Iran and described the speech as "major."
Accompanying Netanyahu in New York are Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman.
No new information is expected to emerge from the three-way meeting, set for 10:00 a.m. Tuesday in New York and which at this point is expected to be primarily symbolic in nature.
According to a statement issued by White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, the meeting "will continue the efforts of President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and special envoy George Mitchell to lay the groundwork for the re-launch of negotiations, and to create a positive context for those negotiations so that they can succeed."
Abbas has insisted that he will not speak with Netanyahu until Israel freezes all construction in those areas, including any building to accommodate natural growth.
Netanyahu spokesman Nir Hefetz said the Prime Minister welcomed the invitation from Obama to attend the meeting, reminding journalists he had said he would travel anywhere in the world to secure peace for Israel.
PA negotiator Saeb Erekat, however, said in a statement that Abbas had no intention of pursuing peace at this point: "The Palestinian leadership is insisting that there will be no peace negotiations unless settlement activities are halted."