CAIRO, 25 March 2007 — Arab states have no intention of modifying an Arab initiative for peace to make it more palatable to Israel when they convene at a summit in Saudi Arabia next week, the head of the Arab League said yesterday.
Secretary-General Amr Moussa said the 2002 initiative, which offers Israel normal ties with Arab countries in return for full withdrawal from all lands occupied in the 1967 Middle East War, remained on the table.
“We fail to understand why we should modify such a peace offer, and make it less objective and less positive. We are not going to fall into this trap,” Moussa told a news conference with visiting United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. “Our hand will continue to be extended on the basis of that initiative,” he added.
Saudi Arabia, which proposed the 2002 initiative, and other US-allied Arab states want to relaunch the land-for-peace offer at the March 28-29 Arab summit in Riyadh. US and Israeli officials have recently spoken positively of the initiative. “We continue to wait for the assurance by Israel of its readiness to enter into peace. Once there is an offer on the other side, then the ball will drop toward peace and toward a process of peace,” Moussa said.
But he said Arab states were “not convinced at all” that Israel was ready to embark on a serious peace process, citing continued settlement building, the construction of the West Bank wall and excavations near Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque compound.
Israel rejected the Arab peace initiative in 2002, but Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said earlier this month he saw “positive elements” in the plan. Deputy Premier Shimon Peres has said the initiative held hope, but was only a beginning.
Moussa spoke as US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived in the southern city of Aswan to meet foreign ministers from Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, the so-called Arab Quartet.
She said she had not asked Arab states to change the offer. “I think that’s not appropriate. It’s their initiative,” Rice told a press roundtable on Friday in Washington before departing for the region.
