"Putting a stop to settlement activities should be the first step in this process," Hardeep Singh Puri India's envoy to the UN, told the Security Council yesterday.
"We concur with the sense of the international community that freezing of settlement activity in the Palestinian territories could enable the peace talks to resume," he said.
Puri asked Israel to implement Prime Minister Netanhayu's address to Knesset in May during which he had said that Israel could consider territorial compromise in return for security and recognition.
Israel's refusal to extend a 10-month moratorium on settlement activity, last September, led to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas refusing to enter direct talks with the Israeli side, which had started after a two-year lull.
Noting that Israeli and Palestinians had limited time before September 2011, the envoy said, "unless this essential step is taken and peace talks resume, the growing desperation may lead the parties to actions that can spiral out of control."
In September, the Palestinians may ask the UN General Assembly to vote on the international recognition of the State of Palestine on the 1967 border will be of tremendous value to Palestinians.
The US and Israel, who are against this move, insist that the situation needs to be resolved through dialogue.
"President Abbas states that he remains committed to negotiations, and that efforts in the United Nations would help to preserve the two-State solution," Robert Serry, Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, told the Security Council.
"Israel opposes this course of action, stating that it will make negotiations for a two-State solution more difficult to achieve," he said.
Serry, however, warned of a deadlock in the talks."Political leaders on both sides are frustrated, as are their publics," Serry said, adding, "This is particularly acute on the Palestinian side, in the absence of a credible political horizon for ending the occupation that began in 1967."
"The political process to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is in profound and persistent deadlock," he said.