RIYADH, March 26: Arab foreign ministers on Monday agreed to revive a five-year-old plan for peace with Israel and called for contacts with all players in the Middle East peace process, including the Jewish state.
“The Arab foreign ministers approved the Arab peace plan without amendment and in its initial form,” Jordanian Foreign Minister Abdel Ilah Khatib said, referring to the blueprint first adopted at a summit in Beirut in 2002.
“The ministers decided that Arab efforts will focus on explaining and implementing this plan,” Khatib said.
“It was decided to set up several working groups to initiate contacts with all parties concerned by the peace process” which would include Israel, he added.
The Saudi-inspired Arab plan proposes full normalisation of relations with Israel if it fully withdraws from all the land it occupied in 1967, permits the creation of an independent Palestinian state and allows the return of Palestinian refugees.
Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem said that the Arab plan was endorsed “as is,” and the chief diplomats decided to establish committees to contact “the international community” with a view to implementing the blueprint.
The ministers will refer their recommendations to the annual summit of the 22-member Arab League opening in the Saudi capital on Wednesday, with only Libya boycotting the gathering.
Participants said the ministers added a clause to their recommendation on the peace plan in which they assigned a special ministerial committee formed in 2002 to set up the working groups that will lobby for the start of negotiations on the basis of the Arab plan.
The groups will contact the international Quartet -- the United States, European Union, United Nations and Russia -- as well as UN Security Council members and “the parties concerned” -- an implicit reference to Israel.
Israel rejected the take-it-or-leave-it initiative when it was first adopted, but Israeli leaders have recently spoken more positively of the ideas as a starting point for negotiations.—AFP
