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U.N. Special Envoy to the Middle East Terje Roed-Larsen, and United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan speak before the start of the Quartet meeting.
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RAMALLAH,
West Bank, September 18 (News Agencies) - A senior Palestinian
official on Tuesday, September 17, expressed disappointment with the
new Middle East peace roadmap adopted by the main international
players, saying it “did not resolve anything.”
Chief
negotiator Saeb Erakat hit out at the “general” tone of the
statement issued earlier Tuesday by top diplomats from the so-called
Middle East quartet of the United States, the European Union, Russia
and the United Nations, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
“This
is a general statement. It doesn’t resolve anything,” he said.
“We were hoping the quartet would stop the Israeli aggression, the
siege and closure, and the Israeli terrorism against our people in
order to move on with the negotiations.”
Erakat
accused the quartet of “ignoring the timing” of Palestinian
elections on January 20, saying the leadership had hoped the quartet
would send international observers to help with the electoral process.
The
proposal “also ignored the statement made by (Danish Foreign
Minister Per Stig) Moeller and the offers he made to Arafat about
final status negotiations,” he said, referring to a meeting the
Moeller held with Arafat earlier this month.
Moeller,
whose country currently holds the rotating E.U. presidency, met with
the Palestinian leader at his battered headquarters in Ramallah at the
start of September to present to him a new E.U. peace plan to end the
two-year cycle of violence.
“The
quartet spoke about helping Palestinians but we want them to help us
by finishing (Israeli Prime Minister Ariel) Sharon’s terrorism ...
and by pushing Israel to withdraw completely from all of the
Palestinian territories and stop the construction of settlements,”
Erakat said.
The
first phase of the three-stage plan, originally drawn up by the E.U.,
calls for sweeping Palestinian security reforms and an Israeli
withdrawal to positions held before the start of the nearly
two-year-old Palestinian uprising.
It
also calls for an Israeli-Palestinian security agreement to be
concluded ahead of the January elections.
The
second phase calls for the establishment of a Palestinian state with
provisional borders and a new constitution by 2003.
The
third phase calls for negotiations to create a permanent Palestinian
state with final borders by 2005.
Top
diplomats from the quartet - the United States, the European Union,
Russia and the United Nations agreed to the outline after a series of
three meetings here that included separate consultations with Israeli
and Palestinian officials as well as several Arab foreign ministers.
“The
quartet is working closely with the parties and consulting key
regional actors on a concrete, three-phase implementation roadmap that
could achieve a final settlement within three years,” the group said
in a statement.
The
quartet’s principle members – U.S. Secretary of State Colin
Powell, UN chief Kofi Annan, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and
current E.U. president, Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller -
warned, though, that for the plan to succeed, a strict monitoring
regime had to be established to ensure compliance by both Israel and
the Palestinians.
“Progress
between the three steps would be strictly based on the parties
compliance with specific performance benchmarks to be monitored and
assessed by the quartet,” Annan said, speaking for the group.
Israeli
Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, who attended a portion of the
quartet’s meetings along with senior Palestinian official Nabil
Shaath, expressed satisfaction with the outcome.
“As
far as we are concerned, we approved the role of the quartet,” Peres
told reporters.
For
his part, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who discussed the E.U.
plan this month with Moeller, reportedly has deep reservations about
the plan and considers the timetable unrealistic.
Parallel
to that meeting, the quartet principals are to meet again, it said in
the statement.
The
Arab diplomats who met with the quartet - particularly Jordanian
Foreign Minister Marwan Moasher and Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed
Maher - also expressed disappointment that these benchmarks and
specific deadlines for them to be met were not included in the
roadmap.
“We
stressed that what needs to be in the roadmap needs to spell out all
three phases,” Moasher told reporters after the meeting.
However,
he and Maher both said they were “encouraged” by the fact that the
quartet members had agreed that an Arab plan - that envisages a
pan-Arab peace deal for Israel in return for land seized in the 1967
Middle East war - should compliment the E.U.-inspired roadmap.
