PARIS, 15 August — The Quai d’Orsay has confirmed that Paris will host an international meeting on Palestine to be held in the French capital on Oct. 21 — 23.
The meeting — technically termed a “rencontre international” — is to be held under the auspices of the Quartet — the contact group that includes the European Union, United States, United Nations and Russia — who will be joined by representatives of the World Bank and, International Monetary Fund, as well as of Japan and Norway.
According to a French Foreign Ministry spokesman, the meeting will focus on the “reform of Palestinian institutions,” and this in the perspective of governmental elections to be held early in 2003. The idea for an international meeting on the reform of Palestinian institutions had been agreed upon in London last month by a working group already established to deal with the institutional reforms considered as necessary if Palestine is to be able to participate in Middle East peace talks that could be held as early as the first quarter of 2003, at least as far as are concerned such countries as France and Egypt.
France has repeatedly indicated its interest in supervising Palestinian elections, with French officials proposing the polls for January. Although there has been much hesitation in recent weeks about the desirability of the participation in the elections of current president Yasser Arafat, some 60 percent of Palestinians in a recent poll said that they would vote for the Arafat if the elections were held today.
Much of the impetus for the holding of an international conference in Paris came out of the July 25 “mini-summit” held in Paris between President Jacques Chirac and Egyptian head of state Hosni Mubarak, a meeting during which Mubarak insisted that Arafat should very well be allowed to run during the elections next year.
