Obama signs small business bill
WASHINGTON, Sept. 27 (UPI) -- U.S. President Barack Obama signed the Small Business Jobs Act in Washington Monday, touting it as an economic building block.
Government, Obama said, "can't guarantee success, but it can knock down barriers to success, like the lack of affordable credit."
"Government can't replace -- can't create jobs to replace the millions that we lost in the recession, but it can create the conditions for small businesses to hire more people, through steps like tax breaks," Obama said. "That's why we cut taxes for small businesses eight times. We passed a new tax credit for companies that hire unemployed workers ... .
"We also increased the exemption on capital gains taxes for key small business investments to 75 percent."
Companies also can immediately write off more expenses, get healthcare tax credits and have easier access to credit, he said.
"So all told, these steps have made a real difference," Obama said. "But as far as we've come, everybody in this room understands we've still got a long way to go."
Taliban reaching out to Afghan government
KABUL, Afghanistan, Sept. 27 (UPI) -- U.S. Gen. David Petraeus said Monday upper echelon Taliban leaders have sounded out senior Afghan government officials about possible reconciliation.
"There are very high-level Taliban leaders who have sought to reach out to the highest levels of the Afghan government and, indeed, have done that," The New York Times quoted Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, as saying.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has set "very clear, very established" conditions for such talks aimed at ending fighting in the country and has the support of the United States, Petraeus said, adding, "this is how you end these kinds of insurgencies."
Petraeus said ending the insurgency also means "coming to grips with the situation in which there are sanctuaries for the insurgents outside the borders of the country."
The Times said a Karzai spokesman confirmed the preliminary contacts.
"In the last few months, there have been signs and signals from different levels of Afghan Taliban," Waheed Omer said. "There have been different levels of contact -- sometimes direct and sometimes indirect."
Builders at work in West Bank settlements
JERUSALEM, Sept. 27 (UPI) -- Hours after the freeze on West Bank settlement construction expired, bulldozers began leveling the ground for a new neighborhood in the city of Ariel.
Itzik Vazana, an evacuee from Gush Katif, said the new neighborhood will house evacuees forced out of Gush Katif in 2005, when thousands of Jewish settlers were forced to leave their homes in a unilateral withdrawal, Ynetnews.com said Monday.
"We are here by right and not on sufferance," Vazana said.
Referring to Israel's current peace negotiations with the Palestinian Authority, Vazana declared, "The Green Line (1967 border) is virtual and political. As evidence, you can see that the other side is not even capable of saying the words: a Jewish nation state. These talks are just a show waiting to collapse."
Work also resumed in the West Bank settlements of Revava, Yakir and Kohav Hashahar, Haaretz reported.
On Tuesday, construction will begin in the settlements of Shavei Shomron, Adam, Oranit, Sha'arei Tikva, Kedumim and Karmei Tzur, the newspaper said. A cornerstone ceremony to mark a new neighborhood in the settlement of Beit Haggai is also planned in the coming days, it said.
Next week, leaders of the Council of Jewish Communities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza intend to step up pressure and demand that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu approve additional construction, the newspaper said.
Abbas mulls continuation of peace talks
RAMALLAH, West Bank, Sept. 27 (UPI) -- Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will seek an Arab League decision on whether to pull out or pursue direct peace talks with Israel, officials said.
Abbas asked to convene an Oct. 4 meeting of the Arab League to discuss whether he should pursue direct talks with Israel or pull out, the London-based al-Hayat newspaper said Sunday.
Abbas indicated he would wait for the league's decision and until then would not abandon the peace talks, the report said.
"If there is no understanding on the settlement freeze, we will go back to the Palestinian institutions and the Arab League," the newspaper quoted the Palestinian president as saying.
Abbas told Jewish officials in Paris Sunday that negotiating while Israel builds in the West Bank settlements would be a "waste of time," Ynetnews.com said Monday.
The Palestinian president said he was satisfied, however, with the progress made so far in direct negotiations, the Web site said.
The al-Hayat report said Abbas requested a league meeting at which foreign ministers will debate Israel's decision not to extend the 10-month building freeze in West Bank settlements after it expired Sunday.
Last month, the Arab League gave Abbas the green light to enter direct talks with Israel.
In Jerusalem, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu called on Abbas to continue "the sincere and good talks that have just begun."
Abbas arrived Sunday in Paris, where he was due to meet with French President Nicolas Sarkozy
Hamas called on Abbas to pull out of the peace talks.
Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum told the Ma'an news agency Israel's insistence to continue construction in West Bank settlements "proves they are ignoring the rights of the Palestinian people."
