Posted on 03/17/2002 7:32:15 AM PST by Thinkin' Gal
PARIS (Agencies) — His Majesty King Abdullah reaffirmed his backing for a Saudi peace initiative for the Middle East, saying Israel will have security once it resolves its differences with its Arab neighbours, not just the Palestinians, in a newspaper interview published Saturday.
“Beyond solving the conflict with the Palestinians,” King Abdullah told Le Figaro newspaper, that the Saudi initiative “offers Israelis the chance to integrate in the region” and to resolve “its differences with its direct neighbours the Palestinians, Syria and Lebanon.”
In mid-February, Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah proposed Arab normalisation with Israel in return for the Jewish state's total withdrawal from Arab lands captured in the 1967 Middle East war.
The King described the Saudi idea as being “destined for Israel's man in the street.”
“At the bottom of his heart every citizen of the Jewish state knows that his future does not depend solely on peace with the Palestinians. That he must look beyond his national borders to one day becoming part of the neighbourhood,” he said.
“We only want to say to the Israelis that peace is possible. It is not the Palestinians who can guarantee the future security of Israel but the whole of the Arab world,” he told the daily.
“Remember that Israel's integration in the region is a necessity you cannot get away from,” he added.
The Saudi initiative is expected to be put before an Arab summit later this month in Beirut and become a regional peace proposal. However, His Majesty stressed that “it is not in Beirut that we will find the solution” to the nearly 18 months of fighting in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories.
He also said it was of foremost importance that Israel let Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat attend the meeting. Since December, Arafat had been cooped up by the Israeli military until Monday in the West Bank town of Ramallah, but he has still not been granted permission to leave the Palestinian territories.
“All I can say is that to refuse Arafat the right to participate in the Beirut summit would signal a big victory for the extremists,” King Abdullah said.
His Majesty also clearly stated his opposition to any new US strikes on Iraq as part of Washington's “war on terrorism.”
His Majesty also warned against attacking Iraq, saying the stability of the Middle East cannot withstand such a war while the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is also raging.
The King urged the West to give Iraq a new chance of talks.
“I have told him (US Vice President Dick Cheney) that the Middle East cannot support two wars at the same time — the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and an American intervention against Iraq,” said King Abdullah, who met Cheney on March 12 in Amman.
“To attack Baghdad now would be a disaster. The security and stability of our region would not be able to cope with it.”
Cheney visited Jordan as his first stop in an 11-nation trip to Middle Eastern countries, as speculation grew that the United States is preparing to attack Iraq.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell told French television on Friday however there were no plans to attack either Iraq or Iran, which along with North Korea have been named by President George W. Bush as forming an “axis of evil” because of their efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction.
Cheney was due on Saturday to meet Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Abdullah, who has joined a chorus of Arab opposition to the idea of US strikes on Iraq while floating the peace plan for the Arab-Israeli conflict which has been welcomed by Washington.
King Abdullah said failing to resolve both problems peacefully would inflame the regional crises which had drawn recruits to Osama Ben Laden, the Saudi-born militant blamed by Washington for orchestrating the Sept. 11 attacks.
“To win the battle against the extremists, we have to finish with conflicts which justify Ben Laden's propaganda,” he told the French newspaper.
“If we do nothing to solve the Israeli-Palestinian problem, if we add an expedition against Iraq on top of the conflict in Palestine, we are shooting ourselves in the foot. The West would simply be detested even more,” he added.
However, he agreed that Iraq will have to be much more flexible concerning the return of UN weapons inspectors, saying that if Baghdad does not cooperate with the UN, “the advocates of dialogue will have no more arguments left in the face of the partisans of force.”
Should read:
Saudi peace idea gives Israel chance to allow terrorists to kill them.
That's just a slick way of saying NEVER.
Israel needs to stop making covenants of death with sworn enemies.
Maybe a block party would break they ice, or make them a nice caserole, Saudi fool.
Oh dear... that looks like it could be the first line of an Adam Sandler song. :-]
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