Saturday, June 4, 2016

France launches ‘urgent’ talks on Israeli-Palestinian peace

French President Francois Hollande said Friday that spiraling Middle East upheaval since the collapse of Israel-Palestinian peace talks has complicated the process and makes it even more urgent bring the two sides back to the table.

With US efforts to broker Israeli-Palestinian peace in the deep freeze for two years and Washington focused on its November presidential election, France lobbied for an international conference that began on Friday with the aim of breaking the apathy over the impasse to stir new diplomatic momentum.

While Palestinians have supported the French initiative, Israeli officials have said it is doomed to fail and that only direct negotiations can lead to a solution to the generations-old conflict.

Neither Israel nor the Palestinians have been invited to the conference, though the objective is to get them to negotiate after the US elections.

"The discussion on the conditions for peace between Israelis and Palestinians must take into account the entire region," Hollande told delegates at the opening of the conference in Paris.

"The threats and priorities have changed," he said, alluding to escalating Middle East conflict that has engulfed Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Turkey's mostly Kurdish southeast and the spread of Islamic State insurgents through wide swath of the region.

"The changes make it even more urgent to find a solution to the conflict, and this regional upheaval creates new obligations for peace," Hollande said.

The EU's foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, seconded Hollande's call and said it was the duty of international and regional players to find a breakthrough since the two sides appeared incapable of doing so alone.

The interim 1993 Oslo peace accords forged by Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat were meant to yield a Palestinian state in Israeli-occupied territory within five years - the so-called two-state solution.
  [Xinhua -china.org.cn-globaltimes.cn]
4/6/16
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