Israel's defense minister claimed Tuesday that the WikiLeaks crisis was distracting Washington from efforts to restart Mideast peace talks. But the U.S. denied those efforts were on hold and countered sharply that perhaps Israel was distracted by fighting a wildfire.

Ehud Barak told a parliamentary committee that talks with the American side have been postponed because Washington was busy dealing with the fallout from secret U.S. diplomatic documents released on the WikiLeaks website, as well as with tensions between North and South Korea.

"For now the matter has been stopped entirely, because of the Americans' lack of attention and concentration," Barak said.

In Washington, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley denied that the U.S. was holding up the talks.

"The process has not stopped," he told reporters. "Our efforts are not suspended."

He pointedly said that perhaps it was Israel that was preoccupied with putting out a huge forest fire that burned until Sunday.

Israeli-Palestinian peace talks restarted in September after a long hiatus but stumbled to a halt three weeks later after an Israeli moratorium on new construction in West Bank Jewish settlements expired and the government refused to renew it.