Obama begins Israel-Palestine talks 22Sep09 September 23, 2009
Aljazeera - 22 September 2009
Barack Obama, the US president has launched three-way Middile East talks, and urged Israeli and Palestinian leaders to make concrete and urgent steps to ensure peace.
In separate and joint meetings with Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, and Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian prime minister, in New York on Tuesday, Obama said that negotiations on the final status of the two nations must begin soon.
“We have to find a way forward … success depends on all sides acting with a sense of urgency… It is absolutely critical that we get this issue resolved,” he said.
“Permanent status negotiations must begin and begin soon … [and] we need to translate discussions into actions.
“I’ve asked the prime minister and president to continue these discussions by sending their representatives to Washington.”
Talks next week
Netanyahu and Abbas shook hands before the talks began on the sidelines of a UN General Assembly session, their first meeting since the Israeli prime minister took office in March.
Obama also said that George Mitchell, the US special envoy to the Middle East, would meet Israeli and Palestinian leaders again next week.
Mitchell returned from talks in the region last week without securing any agreement on the issue of freezing illegal Israeli settlement building in the occupied West Bank.
However, a senior Palestinian source told Al Jazeera that the planned meetings in Washington had been scheduled before Tuesday’s talks.
He said that the Washington meetings will discuss how negotiations can resume, rather than a fresh round of negotiations.
Obama also said that Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, would report back to him in October on the status of the talks.
‘Rhetoric’
Al Jazeera’s Sherine Tadros, in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, said: “What we are hearing is a lot of rhetoric.
“From this initial discussion it seems nothing new has come out.
“Obama talks of the need for compromises, the need for two-way discussions … but there are no compromises that Israel is being forced to make in terms of a permanent freeze on settlements in the occupied West Bank and an end to the siege of Gaza – these are the kind of things people here want to hear.
“They don’t want to hear any more rhetoric about things moving forward, another ‘peace process’ as such that will be a month in the making only to fail at the end.
“They want actual action and until they receive those kinds of guarantees I think people here will remain sceptical and their leaders will remain sceptical.”
Ayman Mohelydin, Al Jazeera’s correspondent in New York, said: “Obama used some rather tough language.”
‘Common sense’
“Saying that it was time for common sense to prevail and a sense of compromise on all sides.
“Perhaps the most important point was putting pressure on both sides to begin permanent or final status negations immediately.
Mohelydin said a Palestinian official had expressed “grave reservations” to him that Tuesday’s talks and the talks in Washington next week will achieve anything, saying that the US had not managed to get Israel to meet their demands.
“In his June speech in Cairo Obama said that the US does not accept the legitimacy of Israeli settlements. In his opening remarks today the president called on Israeli to restrain settlement activity.
“So by any measure there has been a great departure in what the US expects Israel to do. And that has been a great cause of concern for the Palestinians.”
Negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians have been suspended since the beginning of 2008.
LINK: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2009/09/2009922161318347929.html
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