US: Obama: final status talks must 'begin soon'
By Gavin RabinowitzWed Sep 23 03:32:36 EST 2009
Tue Sep 22 17:32:36 UTC 2009
NEW YORK, Sept 22 AFP - US President Barack Obama says final status talks on the creation of a Palestinian state "must begin soon" at a three-way summit designed to jolt stalled Middle East talks back to life.
Despite dim hopes of a breakthrough, Obama used his diplomatic muscle to get Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas together in talks billed as a sign of his firm commitment to peacemaking.
"It is past time to start talking about negotiations," Obama told reporters on Tuesday as the summit opened on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly.
"Success depends on all sides acting with a sense of urgency," Obama said, adding that final status talks on the most divisive issues barring the creation of a Palestinian state "must begin and begin soon."
Netanyahu was meeting Abbas for the first time since taking office in March, after an intense US diplomatic effort failed to yield an Israeli settlement freeze or concessions by Arab states towards the Jewish state.
Before the three-way meet-up, Obama held separate talks with Netanyahu and Abbas.
US, Israeli and Palestinian officials had taken pains to stress before the three-way summit that wide gaps between the sides were unlikely to be bridged in a single meeting.
"We have no grand expectations out of one meeting except to continue, as the president talked about from his very first day in office... the hard work, day-to-day diplomacy, that has to be done to seek a lasting peace," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Monday.
But the White House says the fact the meeting took place at all was a sign of progress.
Tuesday's talks were less a discussion about the key final status issues including Jewish settlements in the West Bank, the borders of an eventual Palestinian state or the status of Jerusalem and Palestinian refugees, and more a bid to bring initial contacts closer.
Obama, who vowed, unlike ex-president George W Bush, to engage in the Middle East early in his presidency, had hoped a deal on opening talks would already be sealed after exhaustive diplomacy by peace envoy George Mitchell.
But Mitchell was unable to convince the hawkish Netanyahu government to agree to the complete freeze on settlement expansion that Washington has called for and the Palestinians have demanded as a condition of starting talks.
Arab states have also snubbed Obama's call for concessions, for instance allowing overflights of Israeli commercial aircraft, as a sweetener for Netanyahu's government to contemplate talks with the Palestinians.
Obama, who is facing a flurry of testing problems at home, and a clutch of brewing foreign crises, is taking somewhat of a risk with his political capital by holding the meeting at all.
Some observers, key members of the Bush administration included, argue that the symbolism of the presidency should only be brought to bear when a critical moment is in sight - not merely as a way of kick-starting talks.
But Obama's aides say that only with consistent, focused US engagement at a high-level will Israelis and Palestinians ever move towards a consistent process of dialogue.
