Middle East News

Foreign minister: Israel not buying time in peace talks (2nd Roundup)

Nov 1, 2007, 20:58 GMT

Tel Aviv/Ramallah - Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni denied Thursday that Israel wants to drag out peace talks, saying that the Jewish state opposes a deadline for establishing a Palestinian state because failure to meet a target date could spark new violence. 'Israel is not interested in buying time. That is not the case at all,' she told a news conference in Tel Aviv with visiting German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier. Livni said that past experience shows that timetables often proved impossible to keep, and this, she said, could 'afterward create violence and terrorism.' She spoke after Ahmed Qureia, head of the Palestinian negotiating team preparing a joint document with Israel for the Middle East conference to be held later this month in the United States, said the Palestinians would not back down on their demand for a timetable to establish a Palestinian state. Livni was set to meet Thursday night with Qureia after having held discussions with him the previous evening. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is expected to arrive early next week in the region to hold talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders in preparation for the conference. 'The (Palestinian) Authority will not accept a document without a timetable,' Qureia told a news conference in Ramallah earlier this week, threatening there would be no negotiations without such a timetable. Livni said she believed Qureia understood the Israeli concern. She asked rhetorically whether the Palestinians would prefer 'to waste their time' and not negotiate because there is no timetable. Livni admitted the gaps in the negotiations ahead of the international meeting, expected to be held in Annapolis, Maryland, outside Washington, 'are still wide.' Israel has refused to conduct negotiations in the media, she said. 'The idea is not to blame the other,' Livni said. Steinmeier, who met earlier Thursday with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, said 'We are in a decisive phase,' and that he saw 'great readiness' among the sides to seize 'this window, this opportunity.' 'I hope it will succeed,' he said. Meanwhile, Olmert told an Israeli business conference that the Annapolis meeting was a not a 'peace conference but a meeting intended to create an atmosphere that will allow us to continue with the political process,' in what was seen as an attempt to lower expectations. Olmert said the current Palestinian government appointed by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas wanted peace with Israel, and he would not pass on such a 'rare opportunity,' local media reported. Later, after meeting with Palestinian Information Minister Riad al-Malaki, Steinmeier told a press conference in the West Bank city of Ramallah that Germany would donate 1 million euros to UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, to aid the Gaza population. Steinmeier then held talks with Abbas. Malaki's office said that a Palestinian delegation including himself, Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and other ministers would visit Berlin at the end of the month to light a Christmas tree, to be decorated with items from the West Bank city of Bethlehem, the biblical setting for the birth of Jesus. Steinmeier said the aim of a German-initiated European Action Plan to support Palestinian businesses, education and security services was to avoid wasting time and to plan the allocation of European aid in a timely and organized manner, before the Annapolis meeting and a donors' conference scheduled for December. The idea was to 'share the burden of the European community,' he said, adding that he wanted to avoid a situation where, after Annapolis, no plan was in place and there would be 'double offers' from different countries managed in an 'unsystematic way.' Steinmeier said he hoped the plan would contribute to stability in the Palestinian territories. Steinmeier arrived in the region Tuesday, opening a five-day tour that is to end with a high-level regional conference on Iraq Friday and Saturday and talks with Egyptian President Hosny Mubarak in Cairo. He also met Palestinian acting Prime Minister Salam Fayyad in Ramallah, before heading to Tel Aviv. © 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur

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RogérNov 2nd, 2007 - 00:33:52

Tsipi Livni is lying!

Regarding Tzipi Livni:

The sons and daughters of the original Zionist terrorists now occupy the highest positions of power in the Israeli government. Tzipora Malka ''Tzipi'' Livni, for example, the current Foreign Minister and Acting Prime Minister of Israel, is the daughter of the former terror chief of the Irgun.

Steven Erlanger, writing about Livni in a New York Times article entitled 'Israel's Top Envoy,' dated February 5, 2006, said: ''Tzipi Livni, 47, is the first woman to serve as Israel's foreign minister since Golda Meir. Some think she may be the first since Ms. Meir to be prime minister.''

She is also a Zionist through and through, the daughter of Zionist guerrillas - terrorists in some eyes - who met in the Irgun, the underground organization that fought the British and the Arabs, and that blew up the British headquarters in the King David Hotel in 1946, killing 91 people.

Her father, Eitan Livni (Yerucham Bzozowitch), was the Irgun's head of operations, and … on his gravestone is the map of Greater Israel (!), extending over both sides of the Jordan River. His daughter, who placed this gravestone, has certainly that Greater Israel in her mind at all times.

Erlanger suggests that blowing up a hotel full of people in Jerusalem and killing 91 is only a terrorist act ''in some eyes''.

Livni is a dissembling staller ''in some eyes''.

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SarahNov 2nd, 2007 - 13:15:51

Saudi Arabia and the Palestinians and the other US and Israel 'friendly' leaders must sign a paper while they are standing in Mecca that they will never again allow launched rockets at Israel or harbor fellow Muslims, who have weapons or people they plan to use against Israel and her people, within their ranks. They must also promise not to send even one more suicide bomber into Israel via Palestine or any other bordering country. This document must be signed in Mecca and then a camera must be at the gate of the entrance of Mecca and a neutral party must be visually recorded and verbally recorded taking the document to be signed by the Israeli's.

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Foreign minister: Israel not buying time in peace talks (2nd Roundup)

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