Amman- Arab League Secretary General Amr Mussa and six Arab
foreign ministers met in Amman on Saturday to appraise the Middle
East peace process following the coming to power of a new right-wing
government in Israel.
The meeting came at the invitation of the Jordanian Foreign
Minister Nasser Judeh to coordinate Arab attitudes on the peace
negotiations with Israel ahead of a visit to Washington by King
Abdullah II, the date of which has not been set so far, sources close
to the meeting said.
Taking part in the meeting were the foreign ministers of Saudi
Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, Qatar, the Palestinian Authority and Lebanon.
Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem had been due to take part,
but was on a visit to Iran, according to the sources.
The Jordanian leader is expected to relay to the US President
Barack Obama a Pan-Arab viewpoint based on the Arab peace initiative,
which received fresh backing from the last month's Arab summit in
Doha.
The blueprint, which is essentially based on the two-state
formula, offers Israel recognition by all Arab states if it withdraws
all Arab territories it occupied in the 1967 Six-Day War, including
East Jerusalem.
The Amman meeting came against the backdrop of the election of a
right-wing Israeli government, led by the Likud party leader
Benjamin Netanyahu, who ran on a platform that ignores the two-state
solution, strongly backed by Obama and the European Union, but offers
only 'economic peace' to the Palestinians.
Israel's hawkish new Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who
advocates the deportation of all Palestinians from Israel and the
West Bank, has dissociated his government from the Annapolis
understanding which endorsed the setting up of a Palestinian state
that lives in peace with Israel.
Arab states received encouragement this week from Obama's
declaration before the Turkish parliament that he strongly backed the
two-state vision.
EU countries also recently voiced similar commitments, by among
others British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, who told a press
conference in Jordan on Thursday that London wanted Jerusalem
to be the capital of both the Palestinians and Israel.
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