Jordan rejects Netanyahu's vision of peace with Palestinians

Amman - The Jordanian government on Monday rejected Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's peace offer with Palestinians, saying it failed to live up to the 'world consensus' envisaging the establishment of an independent Palestinian state that lives in peace with Israel. 'The ideas put forward by the Israeli prime minister yesterday fails to live up to the consensus of the world community regarding the bases for a just and comprehensive peace in the region,' Minister of State for Information Affairs and Communication Nabil Sharif said. In the first official Jordanian reaction to Netanyahu's address, Sharif, who also doubles as the official spokesman of the Jordanian government, said that the new Israeli ideas needed 'fundamental development'. In his speech to the Knesset on Sunday, the right-wing Israeli prime minister accepted, apparently under US pressure, the principle of Palestinian statehood but said any Palestinian state should be 'demilitarized'. He also excluded Jerusalem and the issue of Palestinian refugees who left their homes upon Israel's establishment in 1948 from any future negotiations with the Palestinians. 'The two-state solution that ensures the setting up of an independent and viable Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital is the only way for resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in a regional perspective and in accordance with the UN resolutions and the Arab peace initiative,' Sharif said. The Arab peace plan offers Israel recognition by all Arab states if it pulls out from all Arab territories it occupied in the 1967 Six-Day War, including the West Bank and East Jerusalem which were then part of Jordan. Sharif reiterated Jordan's call for re-launching 'serious negotiations', underscoring the importance of US President Barack Obama's adoption of the two-state solution as a way out of the current stalemate in the Middle East.