MOSCOW, March 20 (AFP) - The Middle East Quartet called on Israel to stop building settlements, setting a bold target for a final deal with the Palestinians by 2012 in a bid to kickstart the stalled peace process.
But Israel's foreign minister -- whose country angered the international community by announcing plans last week to build 1,600 new settler homes -- swiftly condemned Friday's statement as harming the chances for a peace accord.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon read out the joint statement agreed by the so-called Quartet comprising the United States, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia.
“The Quartet urges the government of Israel to freeze all settlement activity... to dismantle outposts erected since March 2001 and to refrain from demolitions and evictions in East Jerusalem,” he said.
Israel's plan to build more homes in occupied and annexed east Jerusalem led the Palestinians to call for a halt to peace talks and precipitated the worst crisis in US-Israeli relations in years.
Palestinians want to make East Jerusalem, the mainly Arab half of the Holy City, the capital of their future state.
The Quartet noted that Israel captured and annexed east Jerusalem after the 1967 Six Day War in a move not recognised by the international community, and that the city's status had to be resolved through negotiations.
It also urged Israel and the Palestinians to resume talks on final status issues -- security, borders of a future Palestinian state, the fate of Palestinian refugees and the status of Jerusalem -- to find a settlement within 24 months.
Such a settlement would end “the occupation which began in 1967 and result in the emergence of an independent, democratic and viable Palestinian state living side by side in peace and security with Israel,” Ban said.
Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman was particularly irked by the two-year deadline. “Peace cannot be imposed artificially and with an unrealistic calendar,” he was quoted as saying in an address to the Jewish community in Brussels.
“This type of statement only harms the possibilities of reaching an accord.”Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat welcomed the Quartet's call, but asked for a mechanism to “make sure that Israel does effectively halt completely all settlement activity in the West Bank and east Jerusalem.”The timing of Israel's settlement announcement had infuriated its chief ally Washington, coming as US Vice President Joe Biden visited the country.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Clinton late Thursday following a tense call last week during which she urged him to halt the settler plans.
Clinton said Friday the strong US reaction to Israeli settlement plans was “paying off.”She pointed to the call as one reason behind US Middle East envoy George Mitchell's visit to the region on Sunday after it was postponed over the settlement construction announcement.
Clinton and Netanyahu are set to hold talks next week when Netanyahu visits Washington for the annual policy conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the top pro-Israeli lobby.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton joined Clinton and Ban for the Quartet meeting, along with former British prime minister Tony Blair, who is the Quartet's representative.
Ashton's visit to Moscow came a day after she made a rare trip by a top foreign official to the Gaza Strip.
It was overshadowed by fresh violence when a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip killed a Thai agricultural worker in Israel, sparking Israeli airstrikes on Gaza.
Ban said the Quartet was “deeply concerned” over the situation in Gaza, “including the humanitarian and human rights situation of the civilian population.”Ban is to visit the Middle East, including Gaza, the West Bank and Israel, this weekend.
Palestinian demonstrators clashed with Israeli security forces in the West Bank and east Jerusalem during anti-settlement protests after the Muslim Friday prayers.
Staff at a Ramallah hospital said six Palestinians were injured, one of them critically.
In the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, more than 10,000 people demonstrated in the central area of the tiny coastal enclave and another 2,000 in the southern town of Rafah.
Warplanes later hit the disused Gaza airport in the south of the coastal strip. Palestinian medical officials said 11 people in the vicinity had been hurt, two seriously. |
E-mail
