World must help ordinary Palestinians, Blair says (Extra)

Jun 26, 2009, 14:44 GMT

Trieste, Italy - The only way to solve the Israel-Palestine conflict is to help ordinary Palestinians rebuild their economy, especially in Gaza, the United Nations Middle East quartet's special envoy to the Middle East, Tony Blair, said Friday.

'We are all worried that we support Gaza and then there's a further outbreak of conflict, but the best way of preventing that ... is to help the people, because that is the way of preventing extremism gaining ground,' Blair said.

'The one thing that I've learned in the last two years is that you can never separate politics and security and economics - they go together, and the West Bank and Gaza are going to be one Palestinian state, not two,' he said.

Blair was speaking after a formal meeting of the quartet of major powers negotiating on the Middle East peace process - the European Union, Russia, the United Nations and the United States - in the Italian port of Trieste.

It was the first formal quartet meeting since the inauguration of US President Barack Obama revived hopes for a comprehensive peace deal in the Middle East.

The meeting called on Israelis to stop building or expanding settlements in Palestinian areas, urged all Palestinians to recognize Israel's right to exist, and called on the international community to give 'robust and sustained financial support' to the Palestinian Authority.

The quartet meeting was held on the fringes of a meeting of the foreign ministers of the group of eight leading industrialized nations (G8) in Trieste.