RAMALLAH – The US must move fast on its planned drive to revive Middle East talks before Palestinians seek recognition as a state, a spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Wednesday. “It’s time for the American administration to move before September,” said President Mahoud Abbas’s spokesman, Nabil Abu Rdainah. Given a continuing impasse despite 18 years of talks, Palestinian leaders aim to ask the UN General Assembly in September for recogniti-on of statehood on all of the territory Israel occupied in 1967.
That would include Gaza, over which the Palestinian Authority currently has no control. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Tuesday that the US plans a new push to promote comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace, suggesting a stronger hand by Washington to try to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “Talk about plans and new initiatives is not enough. There should be an effective US role and strong policy against settlements,” Abu Rdainah said in response. “The administration has started to realise the situation in the Mideast is dangerous,” he added.
Palestinian PM Salam Fayyad was to brief Western representatives in Brussels on Wednesday on his bid for nearly $5 billion in investment to launch a Palestinian state. The UN, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have praised Fayyad’s drive over the past two years to establish the institutions and attributes of a modern state in time for the General Assembly meeting.
US-brokered peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians broke down last September in a dispute over continued Jewish settlement building in the occupied West Bank.
