World
  |
|
Israel must quit Arab land to co-exist with Muslims: Jordan king
By Randa Habib
AFP
AMMAN
Petroleumworld.com 04 11 07
Jordan's King Abdullah II urged Israel to end its occupation of Arab land to guarantee peaceful co-existence with the world's Muslims and warned against a hasty US troop pullout from Iraq, in an interview with AFP on Tuesday.
"Israel, the European states and the United States should realise that the Palestinian issue does not only concern the Palestinians but also has the sympathy of all Muslims from Indonesia to the Maghreb states," he said.
"If Israel wants to co-exist with more than a billion Muslims, it should end its occupation of Palestinian and Arab lands."
The king also urged the Israeli people to accept an Arab peace plan adopted at a summit in Saudi Arabia last month, saying it "reflects collective Arab will to build peace that puts an end to years of violence and suffering.
"They also should acknowledge that this is a unique opportunity in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict and that it is time they work to convince their leaders of the need to resume peace negotiations," he said.
The five-year-old Saudi-drafted plan offers Israel normal relations if it withdraws from all land seized in the 1967 Six Day War, and allows for the creation of a Palestinian state and the return of Palestinian refugees.
Israel rejected the plan when it was first adopted in 2002, but has now said it could serve as a basis for talks provided there were changes on the refugee issue, something the Arab leaders rejected.
Jordan is only the second Arab country after Egypt to have signed a peace treaty with Israel, which seized the West Bank and east Jerusalem from Jordan in the 1967 war.
Asked to comment on remarks by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert who said peace could be possible within five years, the king said: "Peace can be reached during a much shorter time, if goodwill prevails."
"This opportunity may not be available in the future," he said, reiterating that solving the Palestinian question and the issue of refugees were central to a comprehensive solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Abdullah also warned against a hasty US troop withdrawal from war-torn Iraq.
"Withdrawal from Iraq without setting a timetable and without preparing the necessary conditions that would ensure a strong central government able to run the affairs of the state and an Iraqi force able to ensure security and stability, may only worsen the problem and contribute to increasing violence and conflict among Iraqis," he said.
Speaking in Tokyo, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki rejected demands by the US Congress for a timetable to pull out US troops, saying a withdrawal should be based on Iraq's efforts to restore security.
For the Jordanian monarch "the problem with Iraq is that Iraqis themselves are divided between those supporting US-led coalition forces in their country, those rejecting and resisting them as occupation, and those that seek to disrupt the political process and national reconciliation efforts."
He also noted that Sunni Muslim Arab countries have channels of communications with Shiite Iran, which is accused by the United States and other nations in the region of interfering in Iraq and Lebanon.
"Arab states have communication channels with Iran which we hope will be in the interest of the region and its stability," he said on the eve of a brief visit to Paris for talks with outgoing French President Jacques Chirac.
"We as Arabs can build strong ties with... Iran, because what ties the Arab and Iranian nations is much more than what divides them."
Abdullah also reiterated that Jordan wanted to develop nuclear power for peaceful use and would discuss this with UN atomic energy chief Mohamed ElBaradei who visits Amman later this week.
"We in Jordan feel... the need to secure the transfer and establishment of nuclear energy technology as an alternative to importing oil for generating electricity and water desalination," he said.
AFP 10 1155 GMT 04 07
Copyright© 2007 AFP. All Rights Reserved.
Your
feedback is important to us!
We invite all our readers to share with us
their views and comments about this article.
Write to editor@petroleumworld.com
Any
question or suggestions, please write to:
editor@petroleumworld.com
Best
Viewed with IE
5.01+
Windows
NT 4.0, '95, '98 and ME +/ 800x600 pixels