Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak said on Thursday that Israeli and Palestinian negotiators exchanged position papers at a meeting this week, but neither side held out the promise of a breakthrough.

The talks in the Jordanian capital Amman between Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat and Israeli envoy Yitzhak Molcho were the first direct discussions between the sides in more than 15 months.

They will reconvene in Amman on Monday, the US State Department said.

"It is clear to me that the document presented to Yitzhak Molcho by Saeb Erakat is unacceptable in its present state and I imagine that the Palestinians will not accept what was presented by Molcho," Barak told Israeli public radio.

"Long negotiations await us," he added.

"The Israeli side presented a written document to the Palestinians," a source familiar with the talks told AFP on condition of anonymity.

"The document deals with the final status issues that need to be agreed upon for there to be an historic peace agreement," he added.

A Palestinian official said that the Israeli side proposed a withdrawal from around 40 percent of the territory it occupied in the 1967 Six-Day war.

He said that Israel refused to quit mainly Arab east Jerusalem which it annexed shortly after the 1967 war or to allow Palestinian refugees to return to their former homes within the Jewish state.

The Palestinian official, also talking on condition of anonymity, said that Israel insisted on maintaining a long-term military presence along the West Bank's border with Jordan.

"We don't want to make predictions and we would like to wait for the results of the next meeting, but if the Israeli view remains as it is, it means a new proposal for a (Palestinian) state on provisional borders, which we totally reject."

In Washington, US State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland sought to accentuate the positive.

"The good news here is we do appear to be in a process where the parties will be meeting directly, and we hope that this will continue even beyond Monday the 9th," she said.