Reuters Canada Sat 5 Feb 2011 | 14:59 EST Quartet prioritize Egypt's impact on MidEast talks Sat Feb 5, 2011 10:56am EST
By David Brunnstrom and Stephen Brown MUNICH (Reuters) - The Quartet of Middle East peace negotiators said on Saturday they would give high priority to the impact of the current unrest in Egypt on the stalled peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. The United Nations, European Union, Russia and the United States said further delays in resuming talks would be "detrimental to prospects for regional peace and security." "The Quartet took note of the dramatic developments in Egypt and elsewhere in the region in recent days," they said in a statement after a meeting on the sidelines of a security conference in Munich. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon, EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov took part in the meeting. "The Quartet members considered the implications of these events for Arab-Israeli Peace and agreed to discuss this further in upcoming meetings as a matter of high priority," they said. The Quartet "strongly urged the parties on that basis to overcome current obstacles in the peace process." The statement said the four parties reiterated their support for concluding the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations by September this year and said the Quartet would meet again in mid-March on the way ahead. Quartet envoys would seek to meet separately with Israeli and Palestinian negotiators ahead of this in Brussels, it said. PALESTINIAN REACTION Nabil Abu Rdainah, spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said the Palestinians welcomed any meetings of the Quartet but were "demanding a staunch position regarding (Israeli) settlements so that we can go to negotiations." "The crisis of the Middle East is linked to the continuation of the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories," he said. The Quartet statement said the group "regrets" the discontinuation of Israel's 10-month moratorium on settlement activity. It also "strongly reaffirms that unilateral actions by either party cannot prejudge the outcome of the negotiations and will not be recognized by the international community" -- a reference to campaigns by both sides to set out borders before they have been negotiated. Israeli officials had no immediate reaction, but on Friday Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated a call on Palestinians to enter direct peace talks and announced a series of initiatives to help the civilian infrastructure in the Gaza Strip, in line with Israel's "bottom-up" strategy of economic and security improvement. Middle East peace envoy Tony Blair said on Friday that Israel had also agreed in principle to expanding Palestinian Authority security control to seven West Bank towns and helping improve the Palestinian infrastructure in East Jerusalem. Blair emphasized that agreements were not the same as implementation, but in the past two years there had been significant economic growth in the West Bank thanks to actions both by the Palestinians and the Israelis. He said a combination of progress in improving peoples lives and strong political negotiation was needed for peace and this was even more true given uncertainty in the region. (Additional reporting by Dan Williams in Jerusalem and Ali Sawafta in Ramallah; Editing by Maria Golovnina) © Thomson Reuters 2011 All rights reserved. ------------------------------------ Post message: [email protected] Subscribe : [email protected] Unsubscribe : [email protected] List owner : [email protected] Homepage : http://proletar.8m.com/Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/proletar/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/proletar/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: [email protected] [email protected] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [email protected] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
