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| By: Associated Press |
| Published: April 17, 2006 |
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Arab officials on Saturday urged the foreign minister of the Hamas-led Palestinian government to consider an Arab plan to end the conflict with Israel that calls for exchanging land for peace.
Mahmoud Zahar said he would discuss the initiative with the others in the government but pointed out that Israel had not yet accepted the deal.
"I will convey all that I heard to every decision-maker and make a clear picture about the initiative. But the problem is: does the other party accept it?" Zahar told reporters after a meeting with Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa and other Arab envoys.
At a summit in Sudan last month, the Arab leaders said a 2002 peace-for-land initiative is the Arab world's only option for ending the conflict with Israeli, suggesting that a Hamas government should accept the plan.
Israel has never committed itself to the initiative.
Hesham Youssef, Moussa's chief of staff, said Moussa and Arab diplomats 'emphasized that the Arab peace initiative is the essence of the Arab position. No one can stay out of this position."
Zahar arrived here Friday in the first leg of a regional tour that will take him later to Saudi Arabia and several Gulf nations.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit has said he has turned down a meeting request by Zahar due to scheduling problems, a diplomatic snub that shows Egypt is enforcing the regional and international isolation of Hamas.
Shortly after Hamas won the election in the Palestinian territories in January, Hamas leaders - including Zahar - visited Cairo but only met with intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, the key Egyptian mediator between the Israelis and the Palestinians.
Since then Egypt has publicly defended the Palestinian balloting that brought Hamas to power but doing little to co-opt the Palestinian radical group.
Aboul Gheit said he "could not imagine that Hamas would overlook the (Arab) initiative."
The United States and the EU say Hamas must renounce violence, recognize Israel and accept previous peace agreements if it wants aid to the Palestinians to continue pouring. Hamas, which took power earlier this month, has said repeatedly it would not revise its positions.
But the international pressure seems to have yielded results.
In a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan earlier this month, Zahar said the Palestinians want to live side by side in peace with their neighbors, a remark widely interpreted as Hamas' willingness to accept a two-state solution. |
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