Lieberman: My settler status means a "conflict of interests"

Jerusalem - Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said Monday he had deliberately chosen to let others lead the debate with the international community over settlements, because his own residence in a settlement would pose a 'conflict of interests.' The controversial leader of the far-right Israel Beiteinu party warded off mounting criticism that he was not a functioning foreign minister. Critics have charged that since the new Israeli government of hardline Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took office in March, Israel has in fact had three parallel foreign ministers. These were President Shimon Peres who has traveled abroad extensively, Defence Minister Ehud Barak who has led the discussions with the administration of US President Barack Obama on the demand for a complete settlement freeze, and Lieberman himself. The 51-year-old resident of Nokdim, a settlement near Bethlehem on the southern West Bank and not far from Jerusalem, has received a cold welcome on his trips to Europe and North America, when compared to those extended to his predecessor Tzipi Livni of the centrist Kadima party, now opposition leader. 'From my point of view, there is here a clear conflict of interests when someone who lives in a settlement, in an isolate town that is not even counted among the settlements, takes part in the issue,' Lieberman told reporters in Jerusalem. 'I would not want to be accused of this when I have made it a calculated choice not to engage in negotiations on the issue with the Americans.' Lieberman noted that settlement construction and roadblocks were issues that fall under the jurisdiction of the Defence Ministry. Therefore, he argued, it was only natural that the Foreign Ministry played a less dominant role in the talks on these issues. Peres, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and an architect of the 1993 Oslo interim peace accords but whose current duties as president are largely ceremonial, is widely respected abroad. Netanyahu sent Barak, of the left-to-centre Labour Party and his most moderate coalition partner, to Washington last week in a - thus far failed - bid to hammer out a compromise on the settlement issue with Obama's special envoy to the Middle East, George Mitchell. Another problem regarding Lieberman's appointment as foreign minister has arisen amid Egypt's refusal to invite him to Cairo. Lieberman had in the past insulted Hosny Mubarak, telling the Israeli parliament the Egyptian president should reciprocate visits by Israeli leaders to Cairo and come to Jerusalem, or else 'go to hell.' Lieberman downplayed the reports that French President Nicolas Sarkozy had urged Netanyahu to 'get rid of this man' and replace him with Kadima leader Livni. 'Sometimes people say things they regret, even myself,' he said, noting his own statement of October about Mubarak.