Jordan Times
Tuesday, May 9, 2006
Khatib joins Quartet
meeting
AMMAN, May 9 (Agencies) - Foreign Minister Abdul Ilah Khatib left Monday for New
York to join a meeting today of the Quartet of diplomatic powers seeking Middle
East peace and hoping to revive its stalled efforts and unify its approach to
the new Palestinian leadership.
Khatib was expected to call on top diplomats of the US, EU, UN and Russia to
help activate the peace process and restart talks between the Palestinians and
Israelis, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported. Khatib will also hold talks
with US officials in Washington.
The Quartet will confer on the increasingly dim prospects for implementing their
peace roadmap aimed at the creation of a viable Palestinian state.
They will also try to narrow apparent differences in their view of Western
assistance to the Palestinian government formed by Hamas, which Washington and
the EU consider a "terrorist organization."
On Monday, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas urged Quartet to resume financial
aid and reiterated his willingness to enter immediate negotiations with Israel,
according to Agence France-Presse.
Abbas wrote in a letter to the Quartet that "the payment of aid and financial
support for the Palestinian Authority should resume in order to avoid a real
humanitarian crisis," his spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina said. He also expressed
his willingness for "immediate negotiations with Israel in order to implement
the roadmap."
Although the United States and the European Union have cut all direct aid to the
beleaguered Hamas-run administration, Russia has taken a softer line and the
European Union has been searching for a compromise.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will hash over the Quartet's next moves
in talks with Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov, EU foreign policy chief Javier
Solana and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.
Also due to attend were Benita Ferrero-Waldner, European commissioner for
external relations, Ursula Plassnik of Austria, which holds the EU rotating
presidency, and the foreign ministers of Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
Annan called for the meeting with peace hopes thwarted by Hamas' refusal to
accede to Quartet demands that it abandon its armed struggle and recognize the
right of Israel to exist.
The Quartet had originally warned that Hamas' intransigence would affect Western
aid. But cracks in its unity have surfaced with a crisis brewing over payment of
salaries to Palestinian government workers.
Russia last month called the US and EU decision to withhold assistance a mistake
and on Saturday underlined its dissent by sending a $10 million grant to the
office of the Palestinian president.
"One of the Quartet's main subjects [of discussion] will of course be the
worsening of the humanitarian and socio-economic crisis in the Palestinian
territories," Russian foreign ministry spokesman said on Sunday.
The Quartet must "find solutions to end the deterioration of the humanitarian
situation in the Palestinian territories and protect the Palestinian
institutions created under the framework of the peace process," he added.
France has proposed creation of a special World Bank account to channel salary
payments to the 160,000 Palestinian civil servants and avoid a critical
breakdown in services in the territories.
"We [are trying] now to set up an international mechanism to send aid to the
Palestinians," the European Union's Ferrero-Waldner told reporters in Cairo
after a meeting Saturday with Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit.
The Americans have reacted coolly to the Paris proposal, which State Department
spokesman Sean McCormack insisted they had not seen although French President
Jacques Chirac sent a letter to all parties Wednesday.
McCormack sidestepped renewed questions on the idea Friday, saying: "Certainly,
if somebody wants to bring up that kind of proposal, we are going to listen to
what they have to say."
The United States has also rebuffed Abbas' call for immediate talks on the
roadmap, maintaining that the refusal by Hamas to renounce violence left the
Israelis with no real negotiating partner.
Abbas, whom Washington says it respects as a Palestinian "moral authority," is
trying to head off a plan by the new Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to
unilaterally fix his country's borders.
But since Hamas came to power, the US administration has retreated somewhat from
its insistence that such final-status issues be negotiated. Rice said in March
she wouldn't reject Olmert's plan out of hand.
US officials have said they won't have any dealings with Hamas until it meets
theuartet's demand. But some Middle East experts here are urging the Americans
to take a more flexible line.