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To: Raymond Duray who wrote (48615)	4/16/2004 6:06:32 AM
From: elmatador	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

Blair backs Israeli pullout plan Friday, April 16, 2004 Posted: 5:22 AM EDT (0922 GMT) UNITED NATIONS (CNN) -- British Prime Minister Tony Blair has described an Israeli plan to pull out of Gaza and parts of the West Bank as a positive step that can lead "to a real sense of movement" in the Middle East peace process. Speaking on Thursday, a day after U.S. President George W. Bush publicly endorsed the plan, Blair said the Israeli plan signified "quite a big change." "I don't think we should ignore the fact that if it is the case that the Israelis, albeit unilaterally, disengage from the significant part of the West Bank and from Gaza -- well, that is quite a big change. "Whatever differences people have, let's not ignore that, and let us use that as the means, then, of getting back into a proper negotiated series of moves that take us back through the road map to the two-state solution," Blair said after meeting with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan at U.N. headquarters in New York. Annan, however, took a somewhat more cautious stance, saying: "The withdrawal from Gaza should be seen as a first step, because we also have to deal with the issue of the West Bank." "I would hope that what has happened does not foreclose moving ahead and working through the road map," Annan added. With the Middle East peace process stalled, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon wants Israel to pull all of its settlements and military outposts from Gaza, as well as dismantling some settlements and outposts in the West Bank. The plan -- which Sharon is putting before his Likud Party for approval in a referendum next month -- would still leave six Israeli settlement blocks in the West Bank, with about 92,000 people. Palestinian leaders have reacted angrily to Bush's endorsement of the plan, saying that it amounts to an illegitimate land grab by Israelis and an attempt by Sharon to unilaterally set the borders between Israel and a Palestinian state, rather than negotiating them as part of a final settlement. The Palestinians also charge that the plan violates Bush's "road map to peace," a series of confidence-building measures and negotiations designed to lead to establishment of a Palestinian state, existing side-by-side in peace with Israel. Further inflaming the Palestinians, Bush also said the United States now accepts that some Israeli settlements in the West Bank will not be dismantled under a final settlement -- an idea to which Palestinians are very much opposed -- and that Palestinian refugees in other countries will only be allowed to return to the new Palestinian state, not to Israel proper. Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat on Thursday said the Palestinians would never give up their quest for an independent state and the "right of refugees to return to their lands." "The Palestinian people will never give up the goal of achieving freedom and independence and a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital," Arafat said in a television address. Arafat said while Israel has killed Palestinian leaders over the decades, it has failed to stop the Palestinian people. (Full story) Asked if he thought Bush's shift in U.S. policy had pushed aside the road map, Blair, who will meet with the president Friday at the White House, said: "I don't see the road map as sidelined at all." "I do not personally see that in any way displacing the road map. On the contrary, I think the road map is, and remains, the right way forward for the resolution for the Middle East peace process, and we certainly strongly support it," he said. Annan said that despite Israel's unilateral move to withdraw, the most difficult issues between the two sides still must be "settled between the parties" in face-to-face talks.