Land-for-peace offer to Israel

By Staff
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KHARTOUM, Mar 28: Arab leaders meeting in Sudan today promoted a land-for-peace offer to Israel, even as Israelis voted in polls that could give their next government a mandate to impose permanent borders with the Palestinians.

Participants at the annual Arab summit demanded the opposite approach -- a return to Middle East peace talks sponsored by international mediators -- and criticised threats to cut aid to the Palestinian Authority when Hamas Islamists take office.

Only 12 heads of state from the 22-member Arab League attended the opening session, a disappointing turnout for the Sudanese hosts, who had hoped for a show of solidarity against Western criticism of their handling of the Darfur crisis.

President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, the most populous Arab state, sent his prime minister while King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, the richest country, delegated his foreign minister.

Arab diplomats said the summit could wrap up its work in a single day, instead of the two days initially planned.

But Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, who arrived unexpectedly early on Sunday, told reporters there was no Arab consensus because some Arab states were allied with ''enemies''.

Arab foreign ministers meeting at the weekend prepared a summit agreement that would maintain financial assistance to the Palestinian Authority at 55 million dollars a month and recommend that Arab states waive Iraqi debt worth billions of dollars.

In the formal opening session, at a newly built conference hall on the banks of the White Nile, the Arab leaders asked the world to help revive Middle East peace talks and respect the result of Palestinian elections won by Hamas in January.

''I call on the ... Quartet (of international mediators) to double its efforts so that Israel responds to repeated Arab calls for peace, especially the Beirut resolutions,'' said Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir.

APPEALS TO QUARTET

At a summit in the Lebanese capital in 2002, all Arab states offered Israel peace in return for withdrawal to the borders as they stood on the eve of the Middle East war of 1967.

Israel rejects the offer as unrealistic. Its interim prime minister, Ehud Olmert, has campaigned in elections on a plan to set Israel's borders by 2010 by retaining big Jewish settlement blocs in the occupied West Bank, while dismantling smaller ones.

Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika and King Mohammed of Morocco, in a speech read by his prime minister, made similar appeals to the Quartet, which groups the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas asked for more financial aid ''to reinforce the steadfastness of our people''.

Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal, not invited because Hamas is not yet in office, said in Damascus: ''Our requests are clear; we expect the summit ... to respect the will of the Palestinian people and support it financially, morally and politically.'' The European Union, a major donor to the Palestinian Authority, said it would not abandon the Palestinians but could work only with ''those who seek peace by peaceful means'' -- a clear threat not to finance a Hamas-led cabinet.

''We have to look first at how a new (Hamas) government will react and according to that we will then take the decision...

for the time being we are still listening,'' said EU External Relations Commissionner Benita Ferrero-Waldner.

The Europeans, along with Israel and the United States, demand that Hamas recognise an Israeli right to exist, renounce violence and accept past agreements with Israel which Hamas refuses.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, in a speech read for him, said the militant Islamist group should endorse the Arab peace initiative as a first step towards meeting Quartet demands.

On Iraq, where the Arab leaders have little influence, their main proposal is that the Arab League hold another reconciliation meeting of Iraqi politicians in June.

Arab foreign ministers have also promised to open diplomatic missions in Baghdad when security conditions allow. But violence in Iraq has deterred them from fulfilling previous such pledges.

The ministers took no decision on Darfur, but Sudan's Bashir repeated a request for money to support the 7,000-strong African Union peace force already deployed in the troubled western area.

Sudan, anxious to avert UN intervention in Darfur, says the African force can do the job as long as it receives funding to overcome its financial and logistical problems.

REUTERS

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