EU urges Israel to call off West Bank home plans

BRUSSELS, Sep 6 (Reuters) The European Union today urged Israel to call off plans to build 690 new homes in two Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, branding the move illegal and apt to raise regional tensions further.

Government tenders were published on Monday inviting bids on 348 plots in the Maaleh Adumim settlement and 342 in Beitar Ilit, the largest number of housing bids for settlement building offered since Prime Minister Ehud Olmert took office on May 4.

''This planned construction threatens the viability of an agreed two-state solution. Like all settlement activity, it is contrary to international law,'' EU President Finland said in a statement.

''Furthermore, the Presidency finds the solicitation of the tenders in question particularly unfortunate at a time when confidence-building measures are urgently needed in the region.'' The EU, whose nations have pledged to send over half of an expanded UN peace force of 15,000 to Lebanon, is pushing for a revival of West Asia peace efforts around the 2003 US-backed peace ''road map'', which sets out a path towards a Palestinian state co-existing alongside Israel.

Israel has an obligation under the road map to halt construction on land Palestinians seek for a state.

But Olmert has suspended an election pledge to set Israel's final borders through a unilateral pullback from parts of the West Bank after Israel's month-long war with Hizbollah guerrillas in Lebanon that ended with an August 14 truce.

Some 240,000 Jewish settlers and 2.4 million Palestinians live in the West Bank, a territory Israel captured in the 1967 West Asia war.

Israel disputes a World Court judgement that all Jewish settlements on occupied land are illegal. It points out that Palestinians have failed to meet their own obligation under the road map to dismantle militant groups.

REUTERS SBA KP2100