Saudi prince invited to visit Israel: Talks on proposed peace plan
TEL AVIV, Feb 25: Israeli President Moshe Katsav offered on Monday to visit Riyadh or receive Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz in occupied Al Quds to discuss a peace initiative proposed by Saudi Arabia, which is gaining increasing support.
“President Katsav said that he is ready to meet with Saudi King Fahd if he would be invited to Riyadh to advance the peace initiative,” Katsav’s office said in a statement.
He also invited the crown prince, who in effect runs Saudi Arabia due to King Fahd’s ailing health, to present his initiative to Israel’s government.
It said that while Katsav has “a positive view of the Saudi crown prince’s initiative, its details would best be discussed directly with the Israeli government.”
The crown prince’s initiative, revealed in the New York Times earlier this month, involves the Arab world normalising ties with the 54-year-old Jewish state in return for a full Israeli withdrawal from occupied Arab lands.
Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said the plan was “new, interesting and fascinating”, while Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has asked Washington to arrange a meeting with the Saudis to discuss it.
Peres, however, specified Israel “would welcome a direct negotiation with the Saudis with no conditions.
“For the first time we can see the readiness on the part of a very important Arab country to take a position to encourage peace, and that we welcome. We see some new elements in that Saudi Arabia has decided to stop its indifference with respect to the peace between the Palestinians and ourselves,” he said.
Although no formal proposal had yet been received, the Israeli government was trying to weigh up the nature of the Saudi initiative, he said.
“We’re trying to clarify the Saudi position and their readiness through different channels, some of them clear, some of them confidential, and we shall see the results,” Peres said.
SHARON SEEKS US HELP: An English-language Israeli daily, Jerusalem Post, said Sharon had asked the United States to help organize a meeting with Saudi officials to discuss the plan, for which most Arab states have now expressed their backing.
“Under the assumption that what has been published is correct, it must be said that we’re speaking of a positive trend,” Cabinet Secretary Gideon Saar said on army radio.
In Riyadh, the official SPA news agency revealed that US Secretary of State Colin Powell had telephoned Prince Abdullah on Sunday to discuss “issues of mutual interest”.
Washington has remained decidedly cautious on the Saudi initiative, saying it had to be looked at in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Israeli Finance Minister Sylvan Shalom, of Sharon’s right-wing Likud Party, was tempered in his response.
“The fact that the Saudi plan has not been publicly announced shows it is still in limbo, but if some arrangement with the Arab world is possible then it deserves to be studied,” he said on the radio.
The Saudi crown prince said last week he had prepared a speech to be delivered at the Arab summit in Beirut next month, but decided to shelve it due to Sharon’s hard line against the Palestinians.
However, he said he was open to reviving the initiative.
Saudi daily Al-Medina urged the Arab summit to officially adopt the plan.
“Arab states should endorse the ideas of the crown prince and turn them into a plan that would be adopted at the Arab summit” slated for March 27-28, it said.
Such a move would “throw a lifebuoy to the Palestinians ... to extricate them from the cycle of violence in the occupied territories and (pave the way) for a Palestinian state, while spelling the end of the tyrant Sharon’s era,” it said.—AFP
