Israeli Withdrawal Precedes Peace Conference: Egyptian FM

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Sunday, May 05, 2002

Israeli Withdrawal Precedes Peace Conference: Egyptian FM

Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher stressed on Saturday that an Israeli withdrawal from its recently reoccupied Palestinian lands should precede any conference on the Mideast peace.

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Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher stressed on Saturday that an Israeli withdrawal from its recently reoccupied Palestinian lands should precede any conference on the Mideast peace.

"Only in this way, can we talk about any peace conference as its mission is to reach an overall settlement based on relevant U.N. resolutions and under the land-for-peace principle," Maher told reporters.

He said that any conference should be based on relevant U.N. resolutions, the land-for-peace principle and an Arab peace plan adopted at the Beirut Arab summit in March.

"We can not afford to start from scratch," Maher stressed, saying that Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia should be included in any peace conference.

On Thursday, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell announced that an international conference on the Middle East peace will be held this summer.

"We committed ourselves to the promotion of serious and accelerated negotiations toward a settlement. We discussed how best to begin to prepare for an international conference meeting this summer," Powell told a news conference after a meeting of the " quartet" in Washington.

"The United States, with our partners in the quartet, will spend the weeks ahead to begin not only talks amongst ourselves but with the parties and with other interested members of the international community to come up with a set of principles that can be the basis for a meeting in the early summer," he said.

The Quartet, formed last month in Spain, consists of the United States, the United Nations, Russia and the European Union to coordinate Israeli-Palestinian mediation efforts.

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