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Britain to host Mid-East peace summit (Jan/Feb)
Britain has won American agreement to hold an international peace conference on the Middle East in London early next year, The Telegraph has learned. The meeting, planned for late January or early February, is likely to be attended by foreign ministers. But it is not yet clear that Israel will send a delegation at that level. If it does not attend, the conference is expected to go ahead with the Palestinian, Arab, American and European participants. Tony Blair will discuss the details with Israeli and Palestinian leaders when he visits the Middle East this month.Washington appeared to pour cold water on the idea at first when the Prime Minister met President George W Bush last month. But the plan has been quietly revived and now has America's blessing. Senior diplomatic sources say that preparations for the conference now dominate foreign policy discussions between the US and Britain and are at the heart of attempts to heal the transatlantic divisions caused by the war in Iraq. Even hard-line supporters of Israel in the Bush administration appear to accept the idea of a conference as a means of shoring up the new Palestinian leadership after the Jan 9 ballot to choose a successor to Yasser Arafat, who died last month. The conference will probably be announced only after the ballot and will depend on the election of the front-runner, Mahmoud Abbas, who negotiated the Oslo accords. The challenge by the populist Palestinian leader, Marwan Barghouti, who has said he will stand for election from his Israeli prison cell, could upset Britain's plans. Washington, which has demanded that the Palestinians choose a new leadership "not tainted with terrorism", is unlikely to deal with a man serving five life sentences for masterminding attacks that killed four Israelis and a Greek monk. Blimey. He only snuffed one Greek monk and a handful of Jews. What's a guy gotta do to get a little bit of forgiveness round here? After all, how many world leaders can honestly say they never got up one morning, went out, and murdered a bunch of random strangers? Posted by: Bulldog 2004-12-06 |
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