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United Nations: Arab countries have reached a 'very significant' consensus after the recent war in Lebanon that there must be a new start with fresh ideas to the Middle East peace process, Saudi Arabia's foreign minister said Thursday.
Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al Faisal of Saudi Arabia and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, in separate interviews on the sidelines of the meeting of the UN General Assembly, spoke of the urgency for an 'end game' in the Middle East to resurrect the process bogged down three years that could give a glimmer of hope to both sides.
At a Security Council meeting later on Thursday, Bahrain's Foreign Minister Shaikh Khalid Bin Ahmad Al Khalifa called for initial negotiation between the two sides with a concrete timeframe, as well as a report from UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the best way to hold those negotiations.
Settlement
He reiterated the long-standing Arab demands that a final settlement include Israel's full withdrawal from the Palestinian territory, resolving the problem of Palestinian refugees, and the creation of a Palestinian state with its capital in Jerusalem.
"We have in the past witnessed the horrors of war, however our peoples are today determined not to see further such horrors," Shaikh Khalid said. "We have a good chance now to obtain peace and should not allow it to slip away." Lavrov said the mood is not limited to Arab countries; agreement also is growing in Russia and among other outside power brokers overseeing the peace process that it must be re-energised to stop more problems breaking out.
Unless the world acts quickly to increase hope among Arab youth, Lavrov warned, it could lose a whole generation in the region to extremism.
"We have found for the first time probably a consensus that is very significant about the need of restarting the peace process," Al Faisal said, wearing traditional Arab robes and headdress, and speaking in a hotel suite overlooking Park Avenue.
The Arab League viewpoint is that any revitalised talks "concentrate on the important issues, rather than the process itself in other words, the final status negotiation elements like the border, Jerusalem, Palestinian rights and so forth," Al Faisal said.
The Saudi foreign minister said he was encouraged that US President George W. Bush is showing a 'new concentration' on the Middle East peace process. But he said Washington still has trouble being seen in the Arab world as an honest broker.
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