CAIRO: Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas said Tuesday he will weigh up holding indirect talks with Israel during a meeting in Cairo this week, Egyptian state media reported.

Abbas, who has rebuffed US pressure to resume direct talks with Israel in the absence of a settlement freeze in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, said his government had lengthy talks with the United States about the indirect talks.

This will be a matter of discussion at the meeting of the Arab ministerial follow-up committee, he told reporters after meeting Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, the official MENA agency reported.

Abbas, who is in Cairo ahead of Wednesday s gathering of foreign ministers from 13 Arab countries, said the discussions would encompass the details of the proposed talks.

US-led efforts to restart negotiations between Abbas Palestinian Authority and Israel, suspended at the start of the Gaza war last winter, have failed so far, with Abbas insisting on a complete halt to settlement construction.

He has rejected a temporary Israeli moratorium on most building as insufficient. Palestinians want the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, which Israeli withdrew from in 2005, for a state, with annexed east Jerusalem as its capital. -AFP