JERUSALEM: EU foreign policy Chief Catherine Ashton on Tuesday said it was still possible to achieve a peace deal and a Palestinian state by September, despite the political turmoil shaking the region.
Asked whether she believed the September deadline was still realistic, given the impasse in peace talks and the shakeup the Palestinian leadership due to the cabinet's resignation as well as that of chief negotiator Saeb Erakat, Ashton said she did.
"It's a timeframe that everybody has signed up to," she said told reporters in Jerusalem ahead of talks with Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas. "It's not the moment to try and change things."
Ashton flew in overnight for a one-day visit aimed at galvanising both sides into restarting peace talks which hit an impasse late last year and look unlikely to start any time soon.
The deadline for achieving a peace deal was initially set by US President Barack Obama when he relaunched direct peace talks on September 2 last year, and earlier this month, the Quartet reiterated its support for "concluding these negotiations by September 2011."
Ashton met with her Israeli counterpart Avigdor Lieberman on Tuesday morning, and was due to meet Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas and premier Salam Fayyad in Ramallah during the afternoon.
She was to return to Jerusalem for evening talks with Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The visit is part of a broader Middle East tour which comes in the context of two popular uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia which have shaken up the region and prompted a shift in its strategic balance.
It also comes 10 days after a meeting of top diplomats from the Middle East peace Quartet, which groups the European Union, the United States, Russia and the United Nations.
"The main focus of her visit is to follow up on the Quartet's meeting earlier this month and ahead of another meeting in March. The aim is to create momentum and movement in the peace process," said Shadi Othman, the European Union's Ramallah-based spokesman.
The European Union said Ashton would brief the parties on the Quartet meeting in Munich, Germany "and outline the next steps agreed during the meeting, notably the upcoming meeting of Quartet envoys with Israeli and Palestinian negotiators in Brussels."
At the Munich talks, the Quartet peacemakers called on all parties "to undertake urgently efforts to expedite Israeli-Palestinian" peace, saying it was imperative due to the political turmoil in the region.
The peacemaking diplomats are to meet again at an unspecified date in March, before which their envoys are expected to hold separate talks with Israeli and Palestinian negotiators in Brussels.
However, Ashton's visit comes just a day after Fayyad and his government submitted their resignations to Abbas, who reappointed Fayyad and asked him to form a new cabinet.
And Saeb Erakat on Saturday resigned as chief Palestinian negotiator, while the Palestinians have decided to close the Negotiations Support Unit after thousands of confidential documents on peace talks with Israel were leaked to Al-Jazeera and the Guardian newspaper in London.
The impact on the planned talks in Brussels was not immediately clear.
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