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Blair arrives in Kuwait for Mideast peace tour
Sun Sep 2, 2007 8:11PM BST

KUWAIT (Reuters) - Tony Blair arrived in Kuwait on Sunday at the start of a two-week tour of the Middle East to push ahead with efforts to end the Palestinian-Israeli conflict festering at the heart of the region for 60 years.

Blair will take the findings of his visit -- his second to the region as Middle East envoy for the international Quartet -- to the group's next meeting in New York on Sept 23.

"During the trip Mr Blair will have detailed discussions with Israelis and Palestinians on a range of economic and security issues," the former British prime minister's spokesman said. "He will then use the New York discussions at the end of the month to set out his initial thinking."
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The meeting of the Quartet, which includes the United States, European Union, United Nations and Russia, comes less than two months before a planned international conference for Middle East peace called by U.S. President George W. Bush.

The conference is expected to take place in mid-November but the United States has given few details of the agenda, raising Arab fears that there will be little time for a concerted international effort to bridge gaping differences.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Sunday more efforts should be made to ensure that the conference results in a framework agreement for peace with Israel including a timeline for implementation, rather than a vague statement of principles.

Israel has said the bar should not be set too high.

It has been years since Israel and the Palestinians last discussed issues at the root of their conflict -- final borders of a Palestinian state, the fate of Palestinian refugees and the status of Jerusalem.

Any move forward has also been complicated by the fact that the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas this year seized control of the Gaza Strip, while Abbas controls the West Bank.

Blair is expected to meet the pro-Western leaders of regional powerhouses Saudi Arabia and Egypt, as well as Kuwait, before arriving in Israel on Tuesday, his spokesman said.

Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Jordan comprise a group set up this year to promote an Arab offer to Israel of normal relations in return for full withdrawal from lands occupied by the Jewish state in the 1967 Middle East war.

The proposal also calls for a just settlement for Palestinians displaced by the creation of Israel in 1948.

Blair arrives in Kuwait for Mideast peace tour (http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKL023693820070902)