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JERUSALEM-Israeli and Palestinian negotiators planned to meet on Monday for a second round of U.S.-backed peace talks bogged down by disputes over Jewish settlement building near Jerusalem.Israeli officials said ahead of the talks that they would consider ways to relax criteria for releasing Palestinian prisoners, part of efforts to secure a swap deal with Hamas for captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.Israel's deputy defense minister, Matan Vilnai, told Israel Radio that Marwan Barghouthi, a Palestinian uprising leader from Fatah who is seen as a possible successor to President Mahmoud Abbas, could be a candidate for release.Abbas aides said substantive talks over borders and the fate of Jerusalem and Palestinian refugees would not begin until Israel committed to halting all settlement activity as called for under the long-stalled "road map" peace plan.The road map also calls on the Palestinians to rein in militants, an obligation that Israel says must be fulfilled in the occupied West Bank and Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip before a Palestinian state can be established.Hamas seized control of Gaza in June after routing Abbas's secular Fatah forces.The first round of peace talks following a U.S.-sponsored conference in Annapolis, Maryland, opened in discord on December 12 with Abbas demanding Israel drop plans to build some 300 new homes in an area near Jerusalem known to Israelis as Har Homa and to Palestinians as Abu Ghneim.On the eve of the second round of negotiations scheduled for Monday, Israel's Construction Ministry unveiled a proposal to build 740 new homes next year on occupied land near Jerusalem-500 in Har Homa and 240 in the Maale Adumim settlement.To read more go to:
As in the days of Noah..
