The Palestinians will soon apply to the UN Security Council to issue a resolution that condemns Israeli settlement in the occupied Palestinian territories, including east Jerusalem, a senior Palestinian official said Friday.

Nabil Abu Rdieneh, spokesman of the Palestinian President told the Ramallah-based al-Ayyam daily that on the light of the Arab League peace initiative follow up committee meeting, "we began to move towards the Security Council."

"Instructions were sent to our representative at the United Nations to follow up the move in coordination with Arab states and other supporting countries," said Abu Rdeuneh.

He also mentioned that the Palestinian leadership "would act according to the highest Arab and Palestinian interests and to the international resolutions."

The follow-up committee, which convened in Cairo on Wednesday, announced that it rejects the resumption of the Israeli- Palestinian peace talks without getting a satisfactory offer from the United States to end the conflict.

The committee had also announced that it would apply to the Security Council to debate the issue of settlement construction in the Palestinian territories, including east Jerusalem.

The Israeli-Palestinian differences have been mainly focusing on the settlement building. The Palestinians insisted that the talks would not resume as long as Israel keeps settlement construction.

Last week, the United States announced that it had stopped its talks with Israel over freezing settlement as a condition to resume the direct peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.

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