By NNN-KUNA
United Nations : The Arab League Peace Initiative Committee has welcomed President George W. Bush’s call last July for an International Peace Conference on the Middle East, due next November, but argued that Israel must take a number of measures to guarantee its success.
“In order to ensure the success of the Israeli-Palestinian track,” the committee said in a joint statement Monday, Israel needs, as a minimum, to suspend its settlement activities and dismantle outposts, halt the construction of the wall, remove checkpoints in the occupied Palestinian territories, lift the siege against the Palestinian people and release Palestinian prisoners.
The committee comprises Jordan, Egypt, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Syria.
Their position came before the invitations were sent out. The US said that Syria will naturally be invited.
Syrian UN envoy Bashar al-Jaafari told KUNA this week that his country did not receive an invitation yet. But if and when it does, “we’ll look at the list of invitees, the agenda and what it would achieve.”
Recalling that the Arab world has called for such a meeting over a year ago, the committee members said in their joint statement “we are keen to ensure that this American initiative is successful.”
For that reason, they said, a number of issues “must be addressed.” The committee members said there should be agreement that the objective of the conference is to achieve a final and comprehensive settlement of the Arab Israeli conflict “within a specific timeframe.”
They added that the terms of reference of the proposed meeting must be UN Security Council resolutions 242, 338, 1379 and 1515, the principles of the 1991 Madrid Peace Conference, especially the principle of land for peace, and the Arab Peace Initiative.
They also stressed the need to establish a follow-up mechanism to ensure that the parties implement their commitments and to “recognise the importance of the role of the UN in resolving this conflict.”
They said the proposed conference “must be comprehensive in nature and include among its participants Syria and Lebanon. Negotiations must be activated on all tracks, and concluded within specific time-frames.”
They also stressed that the agreement should be reached on an early date for commencing negotiations on all three tracks. The Palestinian-Israeli track can resume immediately, without prejudice to the other tracks and the negotiations must address all the final status issues.
The Middle East Quartet principals — UN, US, EU and Russia — late Sunday expressed support for the US initiative.
The principals agreed that the conference should be “substantive and serious,” providing support to the parties in their bilateral discussions in order to move forward urgently on a successful path to a Palestinian state, and vowed to work for a “successful” event and for the “implementation of its conclusions.”