RIYADH, 12 March — GCC foreign ministers yesterday agreed to seek international support for a Middle East peace proposal floated by Saudi Arabia, which offers to trade peace for occupied Arab land with Israel. The ministers from the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council expressed their concern over spiraling violence in the Palestinian territories and accused Israel of “savage oppression” against Palestinians.
“The council decided to seek international support ... for this initiative to safeguard chances for peace, stop the bloodshed and destruction in a way to enable Arab states and Israel to live side by side and ensure future generations a prosperous and peaceful future,” said the final communiqué issued after the one-day meeting.
The ministers said in a statement issued in Riyadh they would lobby the UN Security Council, the United States, the European Union and Russia to back the initiative.
The proposal was floated last month by Crown Prince Abdullah, deputy premier and commander of the National Guard. It offers full Arab peace with Israel in return for total withdrawal from all Arab land occupied in the 1967 war.
US President George W. Bush has said the plan by Washington’s key Gulf Arab ally had created “an opening” to discuss a broader peace agreement. Israel has voiced cautious interest in the plan but has suggested it could be wrecked if it is loaded with demands.
Prince Abdullah’s plan is expected to top the agenda of an Arab summit in Lebanon on March 27 and 28. Most Arab states as well as many countries outside the Arab world have voiced their support for the peace plan.
The GCC meeting said the Beirut summit should adopt “an Arab peace plan based on Prince Abdullah’s initiative and UN resolutions.”
Oman’s State Minister for Foreign Affairs Yousuf ibn Alawi Abdullah said the Saudi proposal for an Arab-Israeli settlement confirmed “the Arab states’ quest to reach lasting peace in the Middle East.” Riyadh’s offer “assisted the Palestinian people’s struggle and (peace) efforts at the international level” at a difficult time for the Palestinians as they fight to “liberate their land and set up their state with Jerusalem as its capital,” he said.
“The conduct of this government of Israeli extremists will lead it to utter failure,” Abdullah, whose country currently holds the GCC’s rotating presidency, said of the policies of the hawkish Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
“Just, lasting and comprehensive peace can only be achieved through the implementation of UN resolutions, chiefly Resolutions 242, 338 and 194” and Israel’s withdrawal from the Syrian Golan Heights and Lebanon’s Shebaa Farms, the communiqué said.
The ministers said Israel bore “full responsibility” for the current escalation of violence with the Palestinians while voicing “full support” for the Palestinian Authority and its leader, Yasser Arafat.
The GCC officials stressed “the importance of distinguishing between legitimate resistance to military occupation and terrorism, which is to be condemned in all its forms and whatever its pretexts.”
They expressed the hope that current international efforts would bring an end to violence and a resumption of Palestinian-Israeli negotiations and urged the United States to put in place a “mechanism” to translate its views on a Palestinian state, outlined by Bush at the UN last year.
