British Prime Minister Gordon Brown (l) gestures alongside Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas as he arrives at AbbasÕ headquarters in the West Bank city of Bethlehem on July 21.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown on his first visit to Israel has called on Israel to stop settlement construction.
Brown met Israeli leaders on Sunday on his first visit to Beit-ul-Moqaddas since becoming premier in a bid to bolster peace negotiations and economic development, AFP reported.
The visit, which will also take him to the West Bank, is aimed at revitalizing Middle East peace talks and pressing his “economic roadmap“ to peace, which is based on improving the Palestinian economy.
He has also been invited to address the Israeli parliament on Monday--the first time a British premier will make a speech at the Knesset.
He spoke at a news conference with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank town of Bethlehem. He is to meet later with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
Brown was also planning to meet Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas on Sunday “to discuss the way forward on the peace process and economic reconstruction and development,“ the premier’s spokesman Michael Ellam told reporters.
Brown will also meet senior Israeli ministers and opposition figures during his trip, which follows a surprise trip on Saturday to Baghdad and the southern Iraqi city of Basra.
Brown--who spent 10 years as finance minister under Tony Blair, whom he succeeded as premier in June 2007 -- is keen to discuss boosting growth in the Palestinian territories and financial incentives for stamping out militants.

Economic Roadmap
Last September, he set out an “economic roadmap“ for peace in the Middle East, in which he said it was his “strong personal belief“ that kick-starting growth in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip was crucial to establishing peace.
“By giving ordinary Palestinians an economic stake in their future, we support the forces of peace and moderation,“ he said.
The report identified five building blocks: reducing public expenditure, a more stable relationship between the Palestinian and Israeli economies, a balance between short-term security and movement and access, diversification of trade links, and an enhanced investment climate.

Fresh Funds
Britain has already pledged to provide almost $500 million (Û315 million) to help build the Palestinian economy and Brown may pledge more during his trip.
Abbas, who held talks with Brown in London last December, praised Britain’s funding pledge, saying the British premier played a “pivotal role in the region“ and his personal involvement was a “source of power“ for Palestinians.
Brown’s predecessor Blair is now the Middle East Quartet’s envoy, representing the European Union, Russia, the United Nations and the United States in efforts to advance peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.
The two--whose relationship soured over the years--will not meet during the visit.

Hamas Invitation
Meanwhile, Hamas Premier Ismail Haniyeh urged Brown to visit the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip to be briefed on the consequences of Israeli blockade.
“We call on Brown to visit Gaza Strip to see the level of humanitarian disaster caused by the (Israeli) occupation with the participation of a number of European countries, unfortunately including Britain,“ Haniyeh said, Xinhua reported.

The British government should no longer accept US assurances that it does not use torture, a parliamentary oversight committee said Sunday in a wide-ranging report looking at London’s human rights policy.
Ministers have previously taken at face value statements from their US counterparts, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and President George W. Bush that Washington does not resort to such practices, AFP reported.
But the cross-party foreign affairs committee said that stance should be abandoned given admissions from the US director of national intelligence, Michael McConnell, that “water-boarding“ had been used on terror suspects.
Foreign Secretary David Miliband has told parliament on two occasions this year that the practice, which simulates drowning during interrogation, amounts to torture.
Miliband’s position has “serious implications“ for government policy, the committee said in its 214-page Human Rights Annual Report 2007-8.
“We conclude that, given the clear differences in definition, the UK can no longer rely on US assurances that it does not use torture, and we recommend that the government does not rely on such assurances in the future,“ it added.

South Korean Prime Minister Han Seung-Soo on Sunday accused Japan of damaging bilateral ties and putting regional peace at risk with its renewed claim to a group of Seoul-controlled islets.
Han, meeting with ruling party lawmakers, rejected Tokyo’s new education guidelines calling for “a deeper understanding“ of Japan’s claims to the islets -- called Takeshima in Japan and Dokdo in Korea -- lying midway between them, AFP reported.
“This is not only damaging the amicable South Korea-Japan relationship... but also undermining peace in Northeast Asia by letting the future generations repeat the distorted history,“ Han said.
The ruling Grand National Party (GNP) said in a statement after the talks with Han that Seoul would make the rocky islets sufficiently habitable for people to live on, helping to thwart Tokyo’s territorial claims.
“The party, the government and the (presidential) Blue House reached a concensus that it is very important to make Dokdo inhabited islands as one of the concrete countermeasures,“ it said, without elaborating.
In protest, South Korea last week recalled its ambassador to Japan and rejected Japan’s proposal for foreign ministerial talks on the sidelines of a regional security forum in Singapore this coming week.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice saw her revamped nuclear diplomacy stall on Iran but stay the pace on North Korea as she prepared to fly to the Middle East and Asia late Sunday.
In Abu Dhabi on Monday, Rice and Persian Gulf Arab allies were to get a first-person account from her number-three envoy about his unprecedented but apparently fruitless participation in talks Saturday with the Iranians in Geneva, AFP reported.
With far more to show for her diplomacy on North Korea, Rice is due Wednesday and Thursday to visit Singapore and meet her North Korean counterpart at what could be the informal launch of the last stage of its denuclearization.
Iran gave no sign it would comply with international calls to halt uranium enrichment, even though Undersecretary of State William Burns went to Geneva in a shift from past US policy of rejecting meetings with Iran until it yields.
Analysts said the US diplomatic move on Iran carried echoes of its pragmatic shift in 2006 toward North Korea, which produced a landmark nuclear disarmament deal last year.
And last month North Korea paved the way to dismantling all its nuclear programs when it gave a partial accounting of its atomic programs and promised to finish disabling its plutonium reactor by October.

The House of Representatives (DPR) of Indonesia is to give the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) all the liberty it needs to investigate legislators involved in corruption, House Speaker Agung Laksono said on Saturday.
“We will give the KPK our full cooperation, and will not protect House members from being investigated by the KPK,“ Antara news agency quoted the House leader as saying in Bali, Xinhua reported.
Laksono said he had met with the leaders of the House factions and asked them to let the KPK investigate any of their members suspected of corruption.
“We have met with each of the House factions and asked them to be willing to let KPK go ahead with its investigations with due observance of the principle of presumption of innocence,“ he said.
The arrests of a number of legislators as suspects in bribery and corruption cases over the past few months should serve as a lesson to the rest of the House members, he said.
But Laksono also expressed the hope that the KPK would fight corruption indiscriminately and not only target legislative bodies while ignoring corruption in other state institutions.