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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (48731)	10/1/2002 10:32:50 PM
From: Eashoa' M'sheekha	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Blair: Mideast situation is ugly -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- DOUGLAS DAVIS Oct. 2, 2002 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- LONDON British Prime Minister Tony Blair on Tuesday called the situation in the Middle East "ugly and wrong" and called for final-status talks between Israel and the Palestinians by the end of the year. Addressing the Labor faithful in Blackpool at party's annual conference, he said: "Yes, what is happening in the Middle East now is ugly and wrong the Palestinians living in increasingly abject conditions, humiliated and hopeless, [and] Israeli civilians brutally murdered. "By this year's end, we must have revived final-status negotiations, and they must have explicitly as their aims an Israeli state free from terror, recognized by the Arab world, and a viable Palestinian state based on the boundaries of 1967." "UN resolutions should apply here as much as to Iraq," Blair added, repeating what he told Parliament last week. "They don't just apply to Israel. They apply to all parties." A senior diplomatic source in Jerusalem cautioned against emphasizing Blair's remarks, saying they are expected on the eve of a war with Iraq and are an attempt to curry favor with Arab countries. "It is to be expected," he said. "It is the rumblings before the war." The source said that with a US action against Iraq on the horizon, policy makers in Jerusalem are bracing for these types of statements meant primarily to please the Arab world. Earlier, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told the conference that above and beyond the Iraqi crisis and the potential nuclear stand-off between India and Pakistan, the "running sore" of the Israel-Palestinian conflict must end. "More than two-and-a-half-thousand people, mostly civilians, have died in the last two years alone," he said. "There is anger, fear, and hatred of both sides, on both sides. "Israel has every right to its security. It can never enjoy this as long as the unimaginable daily threat of suicide bombings against innocent civilians continues." But, he added, "just to see the daily indignities visited on the women and children at military checkpoints in the occupied territories is to know that the Palestinian people have suffered for too long. "The right of the Palestinians to full, independent statehood is unarguable, indivisible, and overdue. All UN Security Council resolutions must be implemented and both sides must now take steps to stop the violence and get talking." He said the British government's goal is to see "two states, Palestine and Israel, living side-by-side in peace and security, and we in the international community have a clear responsibility not to rest until both sides deliver it." Herb Keinon contributed to this report.