SHARM EL-SHEIKH: The Middle East Quartet yesterday called on Israel and the Palestinians to press on with peace negotiations even though a year-end target date for a deal is dead in the water.
The Quartet also called for a halt to Jewish settlement activity on occupied Palestinian land, one of the thorniest issues in the peace talks, and for the dismantling of terrorist infrastructure.
“The Quartet called for the continuing of the peace process in the framework of Annapolis,” UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said after a meeting of the Quartet here in this Egyptian resort. He was referring to the US city where negotiations were revived in November 2007 after a near seven-year hiatus, with both sides committing to reaching a long-elusive deal by the end of this year.
But with Israel now counting down to early elections in February and rival Palestinian groups still locked in a damaging political feud, all sides have ruled out any chance of meeting the target.
“Without minimizing the gaps and obstacles that remain, the representatives of the parties shared their assessment that the present negotiations are substantial and promising,” the final statement said. “The Quartet reiterated its call to the parties to fully implement their obligations under Phase 1 of the road map including in relation to freezing settlement activity and dismantlement of the infrastructure of terrorism.”
The Quartet — the European Union, Russia, the United Nations and the United States — met to discuss progress in resolving core problems such as the status of Jerusalem, the borders of a future Palestinian state and refugees.
Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said she would not sign “any agreement that does not serve Israel’s interest and that is not detailed enough to be put into effect. We are not there yet and it could take time.”
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, on her 19th trip to the region in two years and what may be her last, has tacitly admitted that a deal is unlikely by the time US President George W. Bush leaves office in January. But she said: “We have an international strategy now to finally establish the two-state solution which President Bush set as a goal several years ago.”
Both sides, Rice said, “believe that their negotiations are producing an atmosphere of trust as well as the foundation in which to build.”
In the absence of a full accord, however, Rice is pushing the two sides to define the outlines of a deal before she hands over the dossier to the administration of President-elect Barack Obama.
The Quartet has long backed a peace deal that would see the establishment of an independent Palestinian state living side by side in peace with Israel based on a so-called road map drafted in 2003.
