israil and palestinian,who will peace.they say israil

by baiadha | July 13, 2008 at 07:39 am

357 views | 12 Recommendations | 11 comments

The Israeli and Palestinian leaders have expressed their optimism over the chances for peace, ahead of a summit of EU and Mediterranean rim nations.

Israeli PM Ehud Olmert said they had never been so close to reaching an agreement with the Palestinians as now. Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas said both were serious and wanted peace.

Leaders from 43 nations are meeting in Paris to launch a regional union, tackling issues including regional unrest, immigration and pollution.

Summit host, President Nicolas Sarkozy, said the aim was to see that the region was a place where people could love each other instead of making war.

Ahead of the summit, Mr Sarkozy addressed the media alongside Mr Abbas and Mr Olmert.

Syria talks

Mr Sarkozy says his presidency of the EU is committed to progress on Middle East peace

"How can we achieve peace in this part of the world unless we build confidence, unless we extend the hand of peace and take the initiative?" he said.

Mr Olmert said they had never been so close to an agreement with the Palestinians as they were today, but gave no further details.

Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev was quoted by AP news agency as saying that the prime minister had "agreed in principle" to release an unspecified number of Palestinian prisoners.

Israel's Haaretz newspaper said this would be unrelated to the prisoner exchange deals the government is conducting with Hezbollah and Hamas.

There are thousands of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

At the news conference, Mr Olmert said that he would like direct talks with Syria, but warned they must not hinder talks with the Palestinians.

Mr Olmert is under pressure at home, where he is facing serious corruption allegations. There have been calls for the prime minister, who denies any wrongdoing, to resign.

Optimistic

BBC Europe editor Mark Mardell, in Paris, said the meeting had been very optimistic.

Progress has already been made in other areas. Mr Sarkozy announced on Saturday that Syria and Lebanon had agreed to set up embassies in each other's capitals for the first time.

Relations between the two have been strained since Lebanon's former PM Rafik Hariri was assassinated in 2005 - an attack which Lebanon claims Syria was involved in.

The French president also asked Syria's leader Bashar Assad to use his ties with Iran to help resolve the international stand-off over Tehran's nuclear ambitions.

Mr Sarkozy has long spearheaded the idea of a Union for the Mediterranean.

He recently claimed the grouping could transform the Mediterranean region into an area of peace and prosperity.

Critics have dismissed the new union as lacking substance, and diplomats say there are continuing disagreements over key issues such as how to address the Middle East peace process and a possible role for the Arab League.

The only European or Mediterranean rim leader boycotting the Paris meeting is Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi, who has described the union as a new form of colonialism.

BY : BBC NEWS

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Barry ORegan

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 08:02 on July 13th, 2008

baiadha, I like this story. It's good stuff. Certainly this will go a long way in the peace process, especially since Hamas caught those who fired rockets into Israel a couple of weeks ago, and publicized their willingness to stop further attacks.

baiadha

at 06:45 on July 14th, 2008

all people like peace.you me and...

Caoimhin1

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 08:09 on July 13th, 2008

baiadha, I like this story. It's good stuff.

PEP

at 13:41 on July 13th, 2008

If this is a copy and paste, then the poster needs to use the Highlight Tool to share an excerpt--otherwise it looks like plagiarism and copyright violation.But what do I know? ;}

A few of us spent months fighting copy-and-paste, under the poster's own name, and frankly, it was a waste. No appreciation from staff for the work, and we would have been better off to just ignore it and instead focus on plumping up our own stuff. Now anonymous posters can show up, post links to spam,and do all kinds of things--so any prior concern for NP the business and NP the "community" was, kinda,naive and mis-placed.

julianw

at 15:50 on July 13th, 2008

baiadha, please use NowPublic's highlight tool when citing text from other sources.

Barry ORegan

at 19:21 on July 13th, 2008

I mentioned this to Amir previously, his reply was difficulty in software and internet in Iran, I suggested thinks like Mozilla, etc, but to no avail. By the way, as most of you have noticed, my Highlighter is not working either, though Jordan has been working for weeks trying to correct it to no avail.

Amir is pretty much making do with what is available in his country, though I did mention he place and Opinion on his story, but sometimes language barriers as you have noticed seem somewhat difficult, though Amir as a student, is giving his first person experience living in Iran, which I feel many of us should treat as personal news, if not mainstream news. If he is using media, he should type "Source" and the news agency to deliniate what is his opinion and what is news media.

PEP

at 22:45 on July 13th, 2008

Barry, if Highlight Tool isn't working, then there's a perfectly acceptable way to get around that. It's the method people used for generations before Highlight Tool.

The poster says According to xxxx (the source) and then the poster adds a short excerpt in quotes. The name of the source can be used to insert a link to the source. If the link function is not working in his browser, then he can simply paste in the link at the end: Original source is at http://etc.

It's very very easy to identify the source, add "dah dah dah dah dah dah dah" (quotes replace Highlight effect) and then go on to add original commentary outside that. To make it even more clear, the poster can say something like My take on this is blah blah blah.

But to copy and paste an entire article is, the last time I looked, not encouraged by NP. Let alone legalities and all that. And I'm not sure how pasting in an entire article is offering personal perspective.

This comment is not offering disrespect to the poster, just trying to lay out a way that these confusions can be avoided.