Abbas: Going ahead with UN appeal
Photo: AFP
Officials: PA prevented Quartet statement
Israeli sources say Palestinians objected to Quartet's call to halt push for September declaration
Israeli officials said Tuesday that the Mideast Quartet refrained from releasing a statement of its conclusions after Monday's meeting due to Palestinian objections.
Officials say the Palestinian Authority opposed a Quartet demand to withdraw their plan to declare statehood unilaterally at the UN in September.
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The Palestinians also refuse to halt all demands from Israel once a peace deal is signed, and oppose demands to recognize Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people as well as to modify their education to cease all enmity towards the state, sources say.
Members of the Mideast Quartet – US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, EU foreign relations chief Catherine Ashton, and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon – met Monday evening in Washington on the stalemate in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
The members had stated that they would form an organized stance on the Palestinian Authority's intention to seek UN recognition of statehood in September, but no statement was forthcoming after the meeting.
The Quartet will reconvene again Tuesday evening.
On Tuesday Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said his government's plan had not changed. "We are determined to appeal to the UN in September if the attempts at renewing negotiations with Israel fail," he told a press conference in Ramallah.
"We are on the cusp of achieving a number of rights regarding the establishment of an independent Palestinian state and total peace," he added.
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