Last update - 00:00 11/09/2006
Israel nixes Egyptian call to fix Palestinian state borders ahead of talks
By News Agencies
Israel on Monday dismissed an Egyptian call to fix the borders for a Palestinian state before resolving other issues, saying the sides should first take confidence-building measures set out in the internationall-brokered road map peace plan.
Egypt on Sunday proposed a Middle East peace plan based on fixing in advance the borders and other details of a Palestinian state before setting up negotiations to turn the concept into a reality on the ground.
"There are no magical quick fixes," said Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev, regarding Egypt's proposal to bypass some requirements of the largely unimplemented 2003 peace plan.
The approach is a radical departure from the one which has dominated Middle East diplomacy for most of the past 15 years, which was based on persuading Israelis and Palestinians to build confidence gradually through incremental steps.
The Egyptian idea is similar to the concept proposed by King Abdullah of Jordan in an interview in the latest edition of Time magazine. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak flew to Jordan earlier on Sunday to coordinate plans with King Abdullah.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit gave details of the new initiative at a news conference after talks with visiting Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos.
Aboul Gheit said: "The necessary thinking which everyone must focus on ... is on how to conceptualise what is referred to as the endgame. The endgame is the Palestinian state."
"If we agree on a Palestinian state, its borders and its parameters, then we can deal from there, through negotiations, to try and achieve this aim," he added.
In his interview with Time, King Abdullah said peace negotiations would be helpful in the short term. But he added: "We want to jump ahead to something tangible. We need to get to the point where people want to sign on the dotted line. We want to move to a two-state solution, but we are not going to go back and forth with lawyers until we get there."