Ammon News - (Telegraph ) - In an apparent bid to save from collapse his initiative to revive peace talks, the US secretary of state travelled by helicopter to Ramallah after more than three hours of meetings in Amman, the Jordanian capital, with Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator.

Mr Erekat had told him that his proposed terms for resumed negotiations with Israel were unacceptable.

Mr Kerry had appeared on the brink of leaving the region empty-handed after Palestinian politicians rebuffed his parameters for direct talks between Mr Abbas and Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister.

The revolutionary council of Mr Abbas' Fatah movement demanded changes to Mr Kerry's conditions in a stormy meeting that broke up in the early hours of Friday morning.

Palestinian sources said there was insistence that renewed negotiations must be based on pre-1967 borders, a demand Israel refuses to accept because it wants to keep large settlements in east Jerusalem and the West Bank built after that time.

There was also unhappiness over proposals to freeze negotiations over the status of Jerusalem until further notice and to set aside talks over Palestinian refugees for five years, The Telegraph understands.

While the Palestinians want east Jerusalem – including the ancient city's holy sites – to be their future capital, Israel claims the entire city as its "eternal and indivisible" capital and insists its status is non-negotiable.

Palestinians have also demanded a right of return for refugees and their descendants from Israel's 1948 war of independence, a condition the Israelis reject because it would overturn the state's Jewish character.

Mr Kerry, who is making his sixth visit to the region in five months in a concerted effort to revive negotiations, had been due to depart after meeting Mr Erekat.

But after the pair met twice – first for 45 minutes and then for more than two-and-a-half hours – US and Palestinian officials announced that the US secretary of state would go to Ramallah to meet Mr Abbas for the third time this week.

Mr Abbas, the Palestinian Authority president, had convened meetings of the Palestine Liberation Organisation and his own Fatah movement on Thursday to seek approval of Mr Kerry's conditions for talks.

The Palestinian leader has not met Mr Netanyahu for three years after a previous negotiating round broke down over his demand that Israel freeze settlement building.

Separately on Friday, the European Union published new directives that explicitly forbids the use of its funds for any of Israel's settlements because they are not sovereign Israeli territory under international law. The guidelines were published in the face of stern opposition from Israel, which argues that they undermine peace negotiations by prejudging future borders.