The Palestinians on Thursday expressed disappointment over the peace Quartet’s latest statement, and insisted the settlement issue was central to resolving the conflict with Israel. Top officials from the Middle East Quartet, representing the European Union, the United States, Russia and the United Nations, met in Washington on Wednesday in a bid to address ways of hauling the two parties back to direct talks which ran aground 18 months ago. But the meeting ended with a bland statement urging both sides to focus on “positive efforts” to bring about a resumption of direct talks. Speaking to AFP overnight, senior Palestinian official Nimr Hammad said the statement should have been “stronger and more assertive.” “They know that the main obstacle facing peace in our region is settlement activity,” said Hammad, who is political adviser to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. “Israel has ignored all previous Quartet statements and the Quartet is aware of that, but asking the Palestinian side to get back to negotiations isn’t leading to a solution and peace in the region,” he said. “What we need is to clearly ask Israel to stop its settlements which are the obstacle to negotiations and regional peace.” The statement, which was issued late on Wednesday, expressed support for next week’s meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, but made only a passing mention of “continued settlement activity” at the very end of the document. “The Quartet welcomed plans for dialogue between the parties, and discussed ways to support these efforts,” it said of the rare meeting at which Fayyad is to hand Netanyahu a letter from Abbas outlining his conditions for a resumption of talks, when the two meet in occupied Jerusalem on April 17. The Palestinians see the settlements as a major threat to the establishment of a viable state, and they view the freezing of settlement activity as a crucial test of Israel’s intentions vis-a-vis the peace process. US brokered peace negotiations froze in late 2010 after Netanyahu rejected Palestinian demands that he extend the 10-month partial construction freeze he had imposed at Washington’s behest to coax them into talks. Since then, international efforts to draw the two sides back into dialogue have repeatedly failed to gain traction. In September 2011, Quartet diplomats issued a fresh call for a return to direct talks but there has been little movement since then. The two sides held five exploratory meetings in Amman in January but they failed toagree on further meetings. In their statement, the Quartet urged donors to give $1.1 billion in aid to meet the Palestinian National Authority’s (PNA) funding needs this year. “The Quartet noted with concern the increasing fragility of developments on the ground and called on the parties to work constructively together to take concrete steps to address the PNA’s fiscal challenges, preserve and build on the Palestinian National Authority’s institutional gains, and expand economic opportunities for the Palestinian people,” it said. The State Department said it had notified the US Congress that it planned to release $58.6 million in US economic aid to the PNA, a move taken despite the objections of a senior Republican lawmaker. The group issued the statement after a meeting attended by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon and European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton.