France fears Israel does not want peace deal

PARIS (Reuters) - France fears that Israel no longer wants a Middle East peace deal, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said on Tuesday, and that Paris remained deeply opposed to Jewish settlement building in the West Bank.

Later, French President Nicolas Sarkozy expressed his support for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who has said he does not want to run for re-election in January.

The two leaders spoke on the phone ahead of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's visit to Paris on Wednesday.

While Sarkozy encouraged Abbas to pursue Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, Kouchner made clear he was not expecting any swift breakthrough in the negotiations.

"What really hurts me, and this shocks us, is that before there used to be a great peace movement in Israel. There was a left that made itself heard and a real desire for peace," Kouchner said on France Inter radio.

"It seems to me, and I hope that I am completely wrong, that this desire has completely vanished, as though people no longer believe in it," he added.

Netanyahu held unusually low-profile talks with U.S. President Barack Obama on Monday.

When Sarkozy took office in 2007 he worked hard to improve sometimes frosty French relations with Israel, believing Paris would never be a credible partner in Middle East peace talks if it was seen as biased in favour of the Arab world.

However, relations with the Netanyahu government have not been easy and France has been especially vocal in demanding that Israel halt Jewish settlement construction in the West Bank.