AMMAN, 13 January 2007 — Jordan’s King Abdallah yesterday urged US President George W. Bush to “intensify efforts” so as to ensure a relaunching of the stalled Arab-Israeli peace process, according to an official statement.
In a telephone conversation initiated by Bush a day after he declared his new strategy on Iraq, the monarch also emphasized that in order to be “successful”, any political process in Iraq should “involve all components of the Iraqi people”, the statement from the royal court said.
“King Abdallah underscored the importance of the US administration intensifying its efforts in the coming stage to ensure a relaunching of the peace process between the Palestinians and the Israelis,” it added.
The monarch also told Bush that “any fresh endeavors in this respect should be in accordance with the relevant UN resolutions, the formula of the two (Palestinian and Israeli) states and the pan-Arab peace initiative”. The pan-Arab peace initiative, which was adopted by the Arab summit in Beirut in 2002, provides for extending Arab recognition to Israel in return for the Jewish state’s withdrawal to the June 4, 1967 lines.
“On his part, Bush today briefed the king on the good offices being conducted by the United States with a view to reviving the Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations, including the Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s trip to the region next week,” the royal court statement said.
Meanwhile in Madrid, Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos yesterday proposed Arab participation in the Middle East “quartet” comprising the United Nations, the United States, the European Union and Russia, in order to advance the peace process.
“The moment has come to open up (the quartet) to the Arab world,” Moratinos told an international meeting in Madrid to mark 15 years since the Madrid Conference which preceded the 1993 Oslo Accords.
Moratinos and EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana both expressed the hope that concrete progress could be made in the coming six months to unblock the stalled peace process as Spain lobbies hard to host a new full-blown conference.
Solana said he saw the current situation as resembling a “train of peace negotiations (which) has never left the station.” “It is impossible to continue” in the current vein, Solana added, as he and Moratinos noted, along with meeting chairman and former Spanish Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez, that the situation has worsened with the additional regional flashpoint of Iraq.
—Additional input from agencies
