Posted on 12/22/2004 5:45:02 PM PST by bruinbirdman
Tony Blair won the backing of Israel and the Palestinians yesterday for a high-powered international conference in London to help revive Middle East peace talks and prepare Palestinians for statehood.
The gathering, expected in early March, will be chaired by the Prime Minister and will bring together about 20 foreign ministers, led by Condoleezza Rice, recently appointed as President George W Bush's new secretary of state.
The American support is in sharp contrast with the last British-inspired Palestinian reform conference in London in January 2003, two months before the war in Iraq.
Then the United States sent only a mid-ranking diplomat and Palestinians could only join by video link because Israel had banned them from travelling.
But this time Mr Blair, making a visit to Jerusalem and Ramallah, won the support of Israel's prime minister, Ariel Sharon, and the interim Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, both of whom went out of their way to call Mr Blair their "friend".
However, despite Britain's attempt to tailor the conference to Israel's demands - that it should focus on Palestinian democratic reforms and should be called a "meeting" rather than a "conference" - Israel refused to send a delegation.
Nevertheless, Mr Blair was hopeful that the conference - as well as Israel's planned withdrawal from the Gaza Strip next summer - would restart Israel-Palestinian negotiations as set out in the international "Road Map" for peace.
The Prime Minister was at pains to say the conference was not a substitute for the Road Map, which has been moribund ever since its launch last year.
"I look at it as a bridge back to the Road Map," Mr Blair said in Ramallah. He expressed hope that "we are able to make progress quickly."
Mr Abbas, known as Abu Mazen, showed impatience with the Road Map's preliminary phases, saying Palestinians wanted quickly to open negotiations.
"We are fully available to start very fast in engaging on final status negotiations," said Mr Abbas.
The "final status" issues - the borders of a Palestinian state, the fate of settlements, the status of Jerusalem and the return of Palestinian refugees - are the most contentious questions of the conflict.
Israel insists that these must be left to last, and says the first step has to be Palestinian political reform and the end of attacks.
An unspoken aim of the London conference is to provide political and financial support to Mr Abbas, who is expected to win the Jan 9 elections and formally take over as the successor of Yasser Arafat, the veteran Palestinian leader who died in November.
Mr Blair, the first foreign leader to visit the badly damaged Palestinian headquarters in Ramallah since the funeral, finessed the tricky issue of whether to lay a wreath at the tomb of Mr Arafat, who was regarded by America and Israel as a terrorist leader. He stopped briefly at the grave, nodded and briskly made his way into his meeting with Mr Abbas.
Earlier, at a press conference in Jerusalem with Mr Blair, the Israeli prime minister struck an upbeat note, saying that there was now a genuine chance of progress.
Mr Sharon denied that he intended to use his planned withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, including its 7,000 settlers, was a manoeuvre to renege on the Road Map, which envisages the creation of a Palestinian state on most of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
He said: "The reason I initiated the disengagement process was because I did not have a partner but, once Yasser Arafat left us, I believed that there was a window of opportunity and I am not going to miss it."
About 1,000 supporters of Hamas, the Islamic militant group, staged a rally in Ramallah denouncing Mr Blair.
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