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| By Israel Insider staff November 24, 2007 |
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Israel and the PA have failed to draft a joint statement for presentation at next week's Middle East conference in Annapolis, PA head Mahmoud Abbas told Arab League foreign ministers in Cairo on Friday. He said the negotiations were genuine, but both sides stuck to their stands and, according to him, Israel brought about failure of the drawn-out talks.
Saudi Arabia and other Arab nations decided Friday to send foreign ministers to the conference, but the Saudi foreign minister Saud al-Faisal did so reluctantly. "I'm not hiding any secret about the Saudi position. We were reluctant until today. And if not for the Arab consensus we felt today, we would not have decided to go," al-Faisal said. "But the kingdom would never stand against an Arab consensus, as long as the Arab position has agreed on attending, the kingdom will walk along with its brothers in one line." But he warned: "We are not prepared to take part in a theatrical show, in handshakes and meeting that don't express political positions."
Asked if Syria would attend as well, Moussa said "Syria's foreign minister was present" at the discussions and "the decision is a joint decision." But Moussa said "final arrangements" had to be made. Syria has insisted Annapolis address its demands for the return of the Golan Heights. Earlier this week, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said there would be room at Annapolis to talk about the Golan.
"We are waiting for the American response," Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem told reporters earlier Friday, adding that the response would decide whether Syria would attend the conference or not. "What would be the importance of Syria participation if Golan wasn't part of the agenda?"
But, he added, "we are waiting for final arrangements and it will take place in the additional talks," which will take place in a meeting of Arab foreign ministers in Washington on Monday, a day before the Annapolis conference. It was not clear if the comments meant Syria could still decide not to attend or to send a lower-level representative.
The United States on Friday lauded the decision by key Arab states saying it was a sign the talks would be productive. "This is a signal they believe this will be a serious and substantive meeting," said Karl Duckworth, a State Department spokesman. "We look forward to as full a participation as possible from all invitees."
Saudi Arabia, which does not have diplomatic relations with Israel and does not allow Jews into its kingdom, has feared that the conference would become little more than a photo op, cornering it into high-profile public contacts with Israel without a guarantee of concessions from the Jewish state. The kingdom was looking for an Israeli commitment that Israeli-Palestinian negotiations will tackle the core, most difficult issues of the conflict, such as final borders of a Palestinian state, the status of Jerusalem and the fate of Palestinian refugees. That is unlikely to happen, since Israeli PM Ehud Olmert insists that those subjects would not be raised in Annapolis.
Israel welcomed the news that al-Faisal would attend. "We are happy ... that they (the Saudis) feel a need to have representation at a significant level," Olmert's spokeswoman Miri Eisin said. "We are happy that they are involved and are showing support for the process to make sure it goes forward."
Hamas' Gaza leader Ismail Haniyeh said that the Annapolis conference would do nothing for the Palestinians. "We realize that this conference was stillborn and is not going to achieve for the Palestinian people any of its goals or any of the political and legal rights due to them," Haniyeh said outside the Palestinian parliament building in Gaza City.
Haniyeh said Abbas did not have the mandate to make compromises in talks with Israel, especially over the demand of Palestinian refugees to return with their families to homes in Israel they lost during the 1948 War of Independence. "No one is authorized to compromise or to give up any of these rights, especially the right of return," Haniyeh said.
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