The Hindu : International : Accord on W. Asia peace roadmap

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Nov 11, 2007
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International

Accord on W. Asia peace roadmap

Rivals agree to implement first stage

JERUSALEM: An Israeli official said on Saturday that the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) has made an agreement with Israel that it will be committed to resolving security concerns in order to meet the requirements in the first stage of roadmap peace plan.

“It’s clear to both sides that any future agreement will be conditional to the implementation of the first stage of the roadmap,” Mark Regev, a spokesman for the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.

“It is the key progress in the negotiations between the two sides,” Mr. Regev said.

The two sides made the agreement after a two-week stalemate in negotiations for a draft declaration ahead of a U.S.-sponsored peace summit planned in the last week of November with an aim of reactivating stalled regional peace process.

The two sides concluded that a monitoring mechanism headed by the United States will ensure that each side meets its obligations in the implementation of the first stage of the roadmap, local daily Haaretz reported. Israeli and PNA officials also agreed that “it is possible to begin work on drafting the joint declaration that will be presented at the Annapolis summit,” an Israeli political source was quoted by Haaretz as saying.

The source also disclosed that the two sides would meet again on the matter next week.

Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Ahmed Qurei, the head of the Palestinian negotiating team, met three times during the past week in an effort to iron out the disputes prior to the U.S.-proposed summit.

Ms. Livni emphasised that Israel would not back down from its insistence that the Palestinians must acknowledge fully their obligations prescribed by the roadmap.

The road map’s first phase calls on the Palestinians to arrest militants and dismantle armed factions.

It calls on Israel to uproot new settlers’ outposts in the West Bank in the past six years, to freeze all settlement construction, and to withdraw its troops from reoccupied Palestinian autonomous areas. Israeli-Palestinian bickering over who should implement which steps first has been a major cause for the stalemate in the peace process for the past few years. — Xinhua

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