Quartet mediators to meet officials from four Arab states on Friday
By Reuters
The quartet of Middle East peace mediators plans to meet officials from four Arab states in Egypt on Friday to discuss a five-year-old Arab League peace proposal, the U.S. State Department said on Tuesday.
The meeting will gather the Quartet members - the European Union, Russia, the United Nations and the United States - with officials from Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Syria, U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters.
The talks will take place in the Red Sea resort of Sharm al-Sheikh after a meeting of Iraq's neighbors, ministers from the Group of Eight nations and the European Union to discuss how to stabilize Iraq.
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Washington has been trying to promote the Arab League peace initiative in the hope it might bring states like Saudi Arabia, which do not recognize Israel, to deal publicly with Israel and to help support Israeli-Palestinian peace.
The 2002 initiative called on Israel to withdraw from all land occupied in the 1967 Middle East war, to reach an "agreed, just" solution for Palestinian refugees and to accept a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip with east Jerusalem as its capital.
In return, Arab states would consider the conflict over, enter a peace treaty with Israel and establish normal relations with Israel.
The plan made little headway when first floated amid a violent Palestinian uprising against Israel and was rebuffed by Israel because of the demand it withdraw to the pre-1967 borders.
McCormack said the idea for the meeting originated with Egypt, and that the United States thought it would be useful "to hear directly from the Arab League representatives as to what underpins their initiative, what their plans are for briefing it to other states, including the Israelis."
U.S. officials were disappointed the Arab League -- a group of about 20 mainly Arabic-speaking countries -- earlier this month asked only Egypt and Jordan, which have both signed peace treaties with Israel, to contact the Jewish state about about the Arab peace plan. But U.S. officials still hold out hope that other Arab states may eventually reach out to Israel.
"This initiative can be a starting point for diplomacy, it could be a basis for further diplomacy. So we'll see if that, in fact, happens," McCormack said. "Look at this as an initial meeting, something that we encourage, something that we think is positive."
Quartet mediators to meet officials from four Arab states on Friday
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