Palestine urges efforts to revive roadmap peace plan

Visiting Palestinian Foreign MinisterNabil Shaath on Tuesday urged efforts to revive the stalled roadmap peace plan for the Middle East two days after Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's unilateral withdrawal plan was rejected by his own Likud Party.

"We need an action plan that gets us to peace and to stop all the violence, end occupation and bring us back into negotiations for the building of an independent Palestinian state that is viable and sovereign side by side with the state of Israel," Shaath told reporters at a joint news conference with British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw.

Shaath also said that Palestine would be looking to its British friends to help kick-start the peace process in the Middle East region.

Echoing Shaath, Straw said: "The road map is the only blueprint to go from where we are, which is a position of conflict and bloodshed and heartache on all sides, to a position where I believe the overwhelming majority on both sides want to be, which is a position of peace with a secure state of Israel living side by side with a viable state of Palestine."

Supported by the Quartet of the United Nations, the European Union, the United States and Russia, the roadmap envisages an independent Palestinian state by 2005. But it has been stalled by continuing violence in the region.

Also on Tuesday, Egypt's Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher, who came to London for talks with Straw on the Middle East, told reporters that the road map was still alive.

"We should not allow anybody to kill the roadmap," Maher said, adding that Israel's policy of targeted assassinations of Palestinian militants and unilateral pullout was not the way forward for peace in the region.

Source: Xinhua