Peace moot on
Palestine planned
Foreign Desk Report
CAIRO (Egypt)—The Palestinian foreign minister accepted an Arab proposal
on Sunday for a peace conference to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli
conflict, Arab diplomats said.
Foreign Minister Mahmoud Zahar, of the ruling Hamas party, endorsed a
statement by Arab foreign ministers calling for the peace conference
during a meeting in Cairo, said the diplomats, who spoke on condition of
anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
“The ministers call to convene a peace conference attended by Arab
parties, Israel and the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council
in order to reach a just and comprehensive settlement to the
Arab-Israeli conflict on all tracks according to international
resolutions and the principal of ‘land for peace’,” the statement said.
Arab foreign ministers are holding an emergency meeting in the Egyptian
capital, Cairo, to discuss the recent Israeli offensive in the Gaza
Strip. They will try to agree on the next step after the US vetoed a UN
Security Council resolution on Saturday which condemned Israel’s
military operations. The resolution, which the US said was unbalanced,
followed an Israeli attack on Wednesday which killed 19 civilians. The
Arab League warned the veto would ‘increase anger’ towards Israel.
Correspondents say Sunday’s meeting of Arab ministers is likely to
discuss whether to seek the support of the United Nations General
Assembly, where the US does not have the power of veto.
This was the second time this year the US used its veto on a draft
resolution on Israeli military operations in Gaza. Ten of the Security
Council’s 15 members voted in favour of the resolution, while the other
four abstained.
The draft resolution - backed by Arab, Islamic and non-aligned states
and formally proposed by Qatar - called for a withdrawal of Israeli
troops from the Gaza Strip. It also asked the UN secretary general to
set up a fact-finding mission into the deaths in Beit Hanoun. The draft
urged the Palestinian Authority to act to end violence - including
rockets fired at southern Israel. The US ambassador at the UN, John
Bolton, described the text as unbalanced and politically motivated.
An Israeli government spokesman described the veto as “very
satisfactory”. “The draft resolution did not stipulate that what
happened at Beit Hanoun was a tragic error,” Avi Pazner said. But
Palestinian cabinet spokesman Ghazi Hamad of Hamas told Reuters the veto
was “a signal that the US had given legitimacy to the massacres and a
green light to [Israel] to ... carry out more massacres” Arab League
secretary-general, Amr Moussa, said the veto would “only increase the
anger” towards Israel. Egypt’s Foreign Minister, Ahmed Aboul Gheit,
accused the Security Council of “turning a blind eye to Israeli acts in
Gaza.” |
