OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, (PIC)-- The Haaretz newspaper said on Friday that Moscow refused an American overture calling on the international quartet to recognize Israel as a Jewish state and give it the right to annex the major settlement outposts in the West Bank to its borders.

The newspaper said that US secretary of state Hillary Clinton proposed during telephone calls a week ago with the quartet members to issue a joint statement in this regard.

According to the newspaper, the statement was already prepared by the American administration and called for resuming the negotiations without preconditions in order to reach a peace agreement achieving the Palestinian’s goal of having an independent state on the 1967 borders, but with Israel keeping its major settlements in exchange for compensating Palestinians by giving them other lands.

The statement also called for fulfilling Israel’s dream of a recognized Jewish state with secure borders, but the Russians rejected this text and considered that the reference to future borders would determine the results of negotiations in advance. They also refused to recognize Israel as a Jewish state.

The newspaper quoted a senior US official as saying that his American administration refrained from publishing the statement because of the absence of consensus in the quartet committee.

For its part, the London-based Al-Hayat newspaper said that the visit of Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman to Moscow ended without achieving results after the failure of the Russian-Israeli governmental committee to narrow the gap in contentious issues.

Different Russian media outlets also said that the pleasantries exchanged between the two parties were aimed to cover up the failure of Lieberman’s visit.