John Kerry insists Israeli settlements won't derail Middle East peace talks Kerry said at a news conference in Bogota that he has talked about the announcements with the top Israeli negotiator. He is also trying to reach Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is recovering from hernia surgery. A State Department spokeswoman in Washington, Marie Harf, said that the U.S. had expressed its "serious concerns" about the announcement on Sunday that Israel had approved building nearly 1,200 more settlement homes. It fuelled Palestinian fears of a new Israeli construction spurt under the cover of U.S.-sponsored negotiations. Top U.S. negotiator Martin Indyk has arrived in the region for talks that begin on Wednesday. Palestinian officials already have complained about the settlement announcement, even as Israel released more than 100 Palestinian convicts as part of the deal to resume peace talks. Kerry said the U.S. government views the settlements as illegitimate. He added that criticism on the Palestinian side shows the need to get negotiations going quickly. "I think that what this underscores, actually, is the importance of getting to the table and getting to the table quickly and resolving the questions with respect to settlements, which are best resolved by solving the problems of security and borders," Kerry said. Once you have security and borders solved, you have resolved the question of settlements. Kerry urged both parties not to react adversely or to provoke either side, but to move forward quietly, carefully and deliberately to negotiate the major issues. "With the negotiation of major issues, these kind of hotpoint issues ... are eliminated as the kind of flashpoints that they may be viewed today," he said. Kerry, on his first trip to Colombia as secretary of state, met with Colombian officials negotiating with the nation's largest guerrilla army to find peace in the South American country for the first time since 1964.