Berlin - Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman left
open the future of the Mideast peace process on Thursday, during a
visit to Berlin which marked the last stop of a four-day European
tour.
The hardline minister refused to commit to a two-state solution
for Israel and the Palestinian Territories during talks with members
of the German parliamentary foreign affairs committee.
Lieberman talked about a 'peace industry,' which to date had
achieved little but waste money, according to parliamentarians at the
meeting. He further described Iran as a major threat.
'All this is far from encouraging,' said former German minister
of state for foreign affairs, Werner Hoyer.
Later in the day, Lieberman paid his respects at Berlin's
Holocaust memorial, laying a wreath at the 19,000-square-metre
monument in the centre of Berlin containing 2,711 individually shaped
concrete blocks, known as 'stelae.'
Lieberman was later due to hold talks with German Interior
Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, followed by dinner with his German
counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
Steinmeier was expected to make clear that the new Israeli
government had to keep to the agreements achieved in the Mideast
peace process, German foreign ministry sources said.
Lieberman's European visit - which had included meetings in Rome,
Paris and European Union (EU) talks in Prague - was mostly conducted
out of the media eye. In Berlin, no joint press conference or photo
call was convened for his meeting with Steinmeier.
This echoed Lieberman's reception in France, where Foreign
Minister Bernard Kouchner chose not to hold a joint press conference
as had been customary when Lieberman's predecessor Tzipi Livni came
to Paris.
The Israeli foreign minister, who heads a nationalist party in
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition, caused a stir on his
first day in office, when he announced that Israel was no longer
bound by the so-called Annapolis peace process, which formed the
basis of the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in 2008.
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