Kouchner - To meet Livni
Photo: AFP
PA troops in Jenin
Photo: Reuters
French FM in bid to revive Mideast peace talks
Kouchner kicks off two-day visit in meeting with Palestinian PM Fayyad, calls on Israel to ease travel restrictions on West Bank population. Tomorrow he will meet with Livni
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner was meeting Palestinian officials in the West Bank on Saturday, the first day of a two-day trip aimed at reviving the Middle East peace process ahead of a year-end deadline for a deal.
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Kouchner will urgently renew a call to Israel to reduce restrictions on travel in the Palestinian territories, which is stifling the local economy, a senior French diplomat said.
The minister also intends to stress to his Israeli hosts the importance of freezing settlement building in the West Bank, the source added.
The diplomat said the peace process has "been taking a breather" because of the complications of the US presidential election and Israeli political turbulence.
Paris wants the trip to be "a moment of consultation and dialogue" allowing pressure to be kept up on both sides, according to the official.
The Jenin model
Kouchner began by joining Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad on a visit to the northern West Bank town of Jenin, once a hotbed of militant violence and still plagued by crime, to survey progress on establishing security there.
The minister's arrival in the Middle East follows a meeting in New York last week of the Mideast Quartet (Russia, the United States, the United Nations and the European Union). France holds the rotating EU presidency.
The Quartet urged Israel and the Palestinians to seal a peace deal this year in line with commitments they made at a US-sponsored conference in Annapolis, Maryland in November 2007.
"The current (US) administration only became involved during the last year of George W Bush's second term. This is regrettable. We hope the new administration will involve itself straight away" in the Israeli- Palestinian dossier, a member of Kouchner's entourage said.
The minister also hopes to check on the results of the Paris conference on aid to the Palestinians, after which more than 1.4 billion dollars in direct budgetary support was paid to the Palestinian Authority, according to French government figures.
This conference, held last December, concluded with promises of up to 7.7 billion dollars in aid over seven years.
Last week's Quartet meeting also expressed "deep concern" over continuing settlement expansion by the Jewish state in the West Bank.
