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CAIRO, April 18: Arab foreign ministers asked Egypt and Jordan on Wednesday to contact Israelis and try to persuade them to accept an Arab peace plan offering normal relations in return for land and a Palestinian state.
Egypt and Jordan already have relations with Israel and the Israeli government had hoped that the Arabs would include other Arab governments in the Arab League working group set up to promote the plan with the Jewish state.
But the Arab League named only Egypt and Jordan as the members of the group which will contact the Israelis. Another working group of eight Arab foreign ministers and the Arab League chief will make broader contacts elsewhere.
“There is no free normalisation (of relations),” Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa told a news conference after a special ministerial meeting on the peace plan.
Asked when contacts would start, he said: “It could be tomorrow or within a week. It will be up to Egypt and Jordan.”
A spokeswoman for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Israel would give the Arab delegation a hearing.
“We will be happy to listen to the Arab initiative ... We will not dictate to anybody what they need to say to us, and we will express our positions and will be happy to do so to the representatives,” said spokeswoman Miri Eisin.
The Arab peace plan, re-launched at an Arab summit in the Saudi capital Riyadh last month, offers Israel relations with all Arab states in return for land captured in the Middle East war of 1967 and a settlement for Palestinian refugees.
The Arab League said the mandate for Egypt and Jordan would be “to start efforts to put the Arab peace initiative into effect (and) facilitate a start to direct negotiations”.
“It is significant because the Arab League is sending two Arab countries to negotiate with Israel,” an Israeli government source added. “But this is a very long road and they made a very small step at the beginning of it.”
NOT FOR NEGOTIATION: Moussa said the Arab working group could be expanded at a later stage if the Israeli government met a list of Arab demands, including lifting sanctions against the Palestinian government and an end to work on Jewish settlements and on the barrier it is building through the West Bank.
But Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal, asked if his country might join the expanded working group, said: “No.”
Moussa said another unnamed Arab minister, asked if he would make contact with the Israelis, said: “That'll be the day.”
Egypt and the Arab League have dismissed speculation that the working group will negotiate details of the peace plan with Israel, saying that is up to Arab governments which have territorial claims -- Syria, Lebanon and the Palestinians.
The Arab peace initiative dates back to an Arab summit in Beirut in 2002 but Israel had rejected the terms as too demanding and the United States showed little interest in it.
The attitude of Israel and the United States has changed in public but analysts say it is not yet clear whether Israel is prepared to be more flexible on “final status” issues such as the borders of a Palestinian state and Palestinian refugees.
The countries in the other working group are Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Syria.—Reuters
