Israel’s Peres calls for urgent relaunch of peace talks

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Israel’s Peres calls for urgent relaunch of peace talks

AFP
April 14th, 2010

Israeli President Shimon Peres called on Tuesday for stalled negotiations with Palestinians to be “urgently” relaunched, on the first day of an official visit to Paris.

“A year has already gone by and it’s already late. The negotiations have to be urgently taken up again and we can get to a compromise,” Peres said after a meeting with French Prime Minister Francois Fillon.

“We should help create a Palestinian state, it’s in Israel’s interest. We need to tell our Palestinian friends that too much time has been lost towards the resumption of talks,” he added.

The Israeli president also paid tribute to France for “the extraordinary role that it constantly plays in the peace process”.

Paris has offered to host a peace conference as long as the talks lead to results, while also firmly criticising Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Turning to Syria, Peres renewed his attacks against Damascus, which he accuses of supplying Scud missiles to the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah while publicly talking peace.

“As regards Syria, the question is always the same: where are they going? what do they want, because they speak of peace at the same time they encourage Hezbollah … which has only one sole objective which is to attack Israel,” he said.

“The Syrians have to be clear. They have to decide whether they want to speak about peace or whether they want to support Hezbollah against Israel,” he said.

On Iran, Peres said that Israel and France “completely agree” on the need to “show firmness” towards Tehran over nuclear security.

Peres is to meet with French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner on Wednesday, the second day of a three-day trip to Paris, before meeting with French President Nicolas Sarkozy for a working lunch on Thursday.

This story was originally reported by AFP and hosted by Google

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