"The defence minister's comments were not coordinated with the prime minister," an official in Netanyahu's office told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.

On Friday, Barak told a conference in Washington that he supported a plan originally raised by US President Bill Clinton at the 2000 Camp David Summit, which would see Jerusalem as the capital of both Israel and a future Palestinian state.

"Jerusalem will be discussed at the end with... western Jerusalem and the Jewish (areas) for us, the refugee-populated Arab neighbourhoods for them and an agreed upon solution in the holy places," said Barak, a former Israeli premier from the dovish Labour Party.

But his comments to an audience that included Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did not represent the Israeli government's position, the official said on Sunday.

"They represent the long-held views of the defence minister but don't represent the views of the government as a whole," he said.

Netanyahu holds that all of Jerusalem, including the eastern sector and the Old City with its holy sites, which Israel captured in the 1967 Six Day War, is Israel's "eternal and undivided capital."

This is the second time Netanyahu has had to distance himself from remarks made by a senior minister in recent months.

In September, he issued a statement saying that Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman's UN General Assembly speech, which outlined controversial proposals for an Israeli-Palestinian agreement including making mostly Arab regions of Israel part of a future Palestinian state, did not reflect the official Israeli position.

earlier related report
Arab FMs bring forward talks to review peace process
Cairo (AFP) Dec 12, 2010 - Arab foreign ministers are to meet on Wednesday to review the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process after the US failure to secure a freeze on Israeli settlement building, an Arab League official said.

Its deputy chief Ahmed Ben Helli told reporters the Arab League Follow-Up Committee meeting, requested by Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas, was due to take place in Cairo on Thursday but brought forward after consultations.

Abbas is to brief the meeting on latest US efforts to revive faltering peace talks after Washington admitted defeat last week in its attempts to persuade Israel to freeze settlement construction in the occupied West Bank.

The Palestinian president has in the past sought the endorsement of the League's ministerial follow-up committee on whether to resume US-brokered direct peace talks with Israel.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pledged on Friday that Washington would remain engaged despite the failure and proposed indirect talks on "core issues" such as borders, security, settlements, and Jerusalem.

Abbas, who has been consulting Arab leaders and is due to meet on Monday with US envoy George Mitchell, has ruled out negotiations with Israel as long as it refuses to freeze settlement building on Palestinian land.

earlier related report
Australia FM: 2011 'challenging' for Mideast peace
Amman (AFP) Dec 12, 2010 - Australian Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd warned that 2011 will be a "difficult and challenging" year for the Middle East peace process, after talks in Amman on Sunday with his Jordanian counterpart.

"On the question of the peace process ... this would be a very, very difficult and challenging year, 2011, but we intend to work closely," Rudd told a joint news conference with Nasser Judeh. "Time is running out."

Israel's "settlement activity should cease and it must cease," said Rudd, who was in Jordan on a Middle East tour. "It undermines the effectiveness of the peace process. I will be saying the same when I visit Tel Aviv."

The peace process has been thrown into disarray since Washington conceded last week that it has failed in efforts to persuade Israel to renew a freeze on Jewish settlement building in the West Bank.

US-brokered direct peace talks were relaunched in Washington on September 2 but stalled three weeks later when an Israeli settlement moratorium expired and the Palestinians refused to return to the negotiating table.

Rudd was to meet with Jordan's King Abdullah II later on Sunday.

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