U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Sunday that she hoped the soon-to-expire moratorium on the building of Israeli settlements would continue.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (from L to R) hold talks in Jerusalem, Sept.15, 2010. [Xin Dongxun/Xinhua]

"That certainly is our hope," she said in an interview on ABC's "This Week" with journalist Christiane Amanpour.

Peace talks between the Israelis and Palestinians, which had been stalled for nearly two years, restarted earlier this month, and the administration of U.S. Barack Obama has set a one-year deadline in which to hammer out a peace deal.

The settlement issue has been a major thorn in the side of relations between the two sides, and the Obama administration has called it an obstacle to peace.

The moratorium is slated to expire later this month.

In answer to whether the Obama administration would use any " creative diplomacy" to overcome the settlement question and the looming deadline to end the freeze, Clinton said both sides need to keep talking.

While Obama has vowed to stick with both sides to find a solution, "at the end of the day this has to be an agreement between Israelis and Palestinians," Clinton said.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has threatened to pull out of the talks if the moratorium is not extended. But on Sunday Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu told his party's ministers that there will be no change in his decision to end the partial freeze on settlement building in the West bank, Bloomberg reported.

"We don't want either party to leave these negotiations or to do anything that causes the other to leave the negotiations," Clinton said.

"I will certainly urge (Abbas) to continue in the negotiations just as I've urged Prime Minister Netanyahu. And as President Obama has said, to continue the moratorium," she said.