AMMAN, 16 May 2007 — Jordan’s King Abdallah met yesterday with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and urged him to end measures that jeopardize peace in the region. In talks in the ancient city of Petra, the king cited the building of settlements and excavations at Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque compound as some of the irritants that came in the way of building lasting peace, an official royal court statement said.
The meeting took place on the sidelines of a conference of Nobel laureates.
Referring to reports that Israel was planning the construction of 20,000 housing units in Jerusalem, the king said that “Jordan rejects such measures because they represent a flagrant violation of the rights of Palestinians and Arabs in the holy city and will not help efforts to push the peace process forward”.
While opening the meeting of the Nobel laureates later, King Abdallah stressed the “need to make the connection between ideas and action and achieve tangible and concrete results for initiatives that have been launched in the past.”
“We have an opportunity to harness all of our thought power and abilities and apply them to produce creative, powerful initiatives to nurture tomorrow’s leaders,” the king told the meeting which is attended by 40 Nobel Prize winners and a number of youth leaders from Jordan, Israel and Palestine.
During a discussion with the youth leaders, Olmert rejected the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes in Israel. “The Palestinian refugee problem should be resolved not by returning them to Israel but to the Palestinian state when it is set up,” he said.
The Palestinian refugees’ right of return represents the cornerstone of the peace plan that was relaunched by Arab leaders at their summit in Riyadh at the end of March. The plan offered to extend recognition to Israel by all Arab states after it pulled out from all Arab areas it occupied in the 1967 war, and after an “acceptable” solution was found for the Palestinian refugee problem.
Olmert also reiterated his call for Arab leaders to come to Israel to present the peace plan to the Israelis. If that were not possible, he offered to meet them “at any place without any precondition.”
Olmert’s call was earlier rejected by Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa, who considered it a trick to normalize ties with Arab countries without Israel making any territorial concessions.
