US trys to ease spat with Israel

The US Wednesday tried to calm down a war of words with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, dismissing comments by an anonymous US official as "counterproductive."

The senior US official's description of Netanyahu as "a chickenshit" drew a sharp response from the Israeli leader Wednesday, who countered that Israel's "supreme interests" -- with the security and unity of Jerusalem being the main one "are not the main concern of those anonymous officials who attack us and me personally", xinhua reported.

In response, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said that, "The fact is that comments like that do not reflect the administration' s view, and we do believe that they are counterproductive."

"There is a very close relationship between the US and Israel, but that close relationship does not mean that we paper over our differences," he told reporters at a daily news briefing.

The latest spat erupted over Netanyahu's decision to advance plans for 1,060 housing units in Jewish neighbourhoods in east Jerusalem, which the Palestinians want to be the capital of their future state built on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Israel, however, insists on Jerusalem being its eternal and inseparable capital.

Continuing building of settler homes in east Jerusalem and the West Bank, lands Israel seized in the 1967 war, is a constant source of friction between the US and Israel and had contributed to the collapse of the latest round of Israeli- Palestinian negotiations in April.