G8, Quartet target renewed Middle East peace talks (2nd Roundup)

Jun 26, 2009, 15:44 GMT

Trieste, Italy - The world's major powers want to revive direct peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians this year, top negotiators said Friday during talks in the Italian port of Trieste.

'We hope that we will be able to move into real and productive negotiations (between Israelis, Palestinians and the Arab world) in the near future,' the United States special envoy to the Middle East, George Mitchell, said.

Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that 'We the world, we the Arab League, we the parties, we the UN Security Council ... want to achieve full-fledged resumption of direct negotiations on the peace process between the parties themselves.'

Russia is planning to host a conference on the Middle East peace process later in the year, making Lavrov an important broker in the bid to restart the peace process.

The comments came as the foreign ministers of the world's eight leading industrialized powers (G8) held talks in Trieste. The quartet of Middle East negotiators - the European Union, Russia, the US and the UN - met on the sidelines of those talks.

In their meetings, both bodies called on Israel to stop building or expanding settlements in Palestinian territory and urged it to ease its blockade of the Gaza Strip.

'The only viable solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one that ends the occupation that began in 1967 and fulfils the aspirations of both parties independent homelands through two states for two peoples,' the quartet joint statement said.

They also urged Palestinians to renounce violence and recognize Israel's right to exist, with the G8 statement calling for an 'unequivocal end to violence and terrorism.'

And they called on the international community to do more to help rebuild the Palestinian economy, especially in Gaza, where much of the area was wrecked in Israel's January invasion.

'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,' quartet special envoy Tony 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.

The G8 and formal quartet meetings were the first of their kind to follow the inauguration of US President Barack Obama, an event which gave rise to hopes for a breakthrough in the Middle East.

Earlier on Friday, Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini hailed the new unity between Obama's administration and the EU on the Middle East peace process, saying that the two powers were closer together than ever before on the issue.

The G8 is made up of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the US. Italy currently holds its rotating presidency.