Cairo - Ma‘an - Following a meeting between 13 Arab foreign ministers in the Arab League headquarters in Cairo, the Arab Initiative Committee has called for holding an international conference aimed at launching direct negotiations with Israel, across all diplomatic tracks.
The committee revealed their decision to form a taskforce to contact the Israeli government, and to deduce strategies aimed at reviving and promoting the Arab peace initiative, ratified in the 2002 Beirut summit, and reactivated in Riyadh last month.
The committee also decided to hold an extraordinary meeting of Arab foreign ministers in the first half of June, to be held in Cairo.
Teams from Arab countries have also been established to contact the European countries and Israel in order to promote the peace initiative. Furthermore, the committee decided to keep the peace initiative unmodified and to entrust the Egyptian and Jordanian diplomatic officials to make contacts with the Israeli authorities over its potential implementation.
In a press conference following the meeting, Prince Saud Al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, expressed his hope ‘that the Arab efforts and the peace initiative will find international backing.‘
For his part, Secretary-General of the Arab League Amr Mousa called on Israel ‘to show openness to peace, as the Arab countries do.‘ He also called on Israel ‘to withdraw from the Arab territories, to stop constructing the separation wall, and to lift the siege on the Palestinians, as a prerequisite for the implementation of the Arab peace initiative, which will bring about peace in the region.‘