US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with her Moroccan counterpart Taib Fassi Fihri (second left), Italy’s Franco Frattini (left) and Kuwait’s Sheikh Mohamed Al Sabah during a family photo opportunity in Marrakesh yesterday.

CAIRO: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said yesterday the US demand for a halt in Israeli settlement expansion is clear and that she could have been clearer when speaking about it, days after stirring an Arab backlash over praising Israel’s plan to ease settlement growth.

“I think President (Barack) Obama was absolutely clear. He wanted a halt to all settlement activity,” she said in an interview with Al Jazeera television.

“Perhaps those of us who work with him and for him could have been clearer in communicating that that is his policy. That is what we’re committed to doing and that is what we hope to see when there is eventually a Palestinian state,” she added.

“The alternative to stopping all new settlement construction is that it continues ... We the United States do not want to see that,” she said. “We believe that halting new construction is a positive step on the way to the two-state solution,” she added.

Clinton headed to Cairo yesterday for hastily convened talks with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak following Arab anger over her remarks during her latest visit to Israel. She was criticised for praising as “unprecedented” steps that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would take to limit settlement growth, which fall far short of previous US demands for a complete halt to all settlement activity.

She also called from Jerusalem for an immediate resumption of peace talks that were suspended during the Gaza war at the turn of the year, despite the Palestinian insistence that Israel freeze settlement activity first.

Clinton later clarified her comments to say that Washington still considers the settlements to be illegal and on Monday praised efforts by Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas to improve security, calling on Israel to reciprocate.

The settlements in the occupied West Bank and annexed east Jerusalem, which Israel occupied in 1967, are home to nearly 500,000 Israelis and are considered illegal by the international community.