WASHINGTON (AP) — With the Mideast peace process stalled and U.S.-Israeli relations in crisis, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton headed Wednesday to a Mideast strategy meeting of top international diplomats.



As originally conceived, the meeting in Moscow of the so-called Quartet group of peacemakers — the U.S., Russia, the European Union and the United Nations — was intended to lend support for the start this week of indirect talks between the Israelis and Palestinians. But those talks fell apart before they began — a casualty of Israel's provocative approval of new housing in predominantly Arab east Jerusalem.



The diplomatic crisis erupted last Tuesday when Israel announced during a visit by Vice President Joe Biden that it would build 1,600 apartments for Jews in disputed east Jerusalem, the sector of the holy city that the Palestinians claim for a future capital.