LONDON: British Prime Minister Gordon Brown threw his weight yesterday behind an Arab League appeal to US president-elect Barack Obama to give added urgency to the Middle East peace process.
Speaking after talks with Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad — and before talks with Israel’s interim Premier Ehud Olmert today — he also urged Israel to stop settlement building, saying it was a “barrier” to peace.
“We welcome the renewed focus on the Arab peace initiative embodied in the recent letter by 22 states calling for president-elect Obama to prioritize achieving a comprehensive peace,” said Brown.
“There is an urgency about the need to act,” he said, voicing hope that “2009 can see real progress in a settlement between the longstanding problems of the Palestinian areas and Israel.”
The 22-nation Arab League said last week that it had detailed its vision for an end to the decades-old conflict in a letter signed by Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal and delivered to Obama through an aide.
The League adopted a Saudi proposal in 2002, which called on Israel to withdraw from the territories it occupied in 1967, in return for diplomatic relations with Arab states.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas urged Obama after his election win last month to increase US attention to the Middle East peace process as soon as he enters the White House on Jan. 20.
Later yesterday, Brown told a Palestinian investment conference in London that next year should be the “Middle East year of peace,” adding that in his first conversation with Obama, the two had agreed that a Middle East peace deal should be a priority.
Brown’s predecessor Tony Blair said at the same conference that he thought the Arab peace initiative was crucial to an emerging consensus about how to take the Middle East peace process ahead.
