New Israeli Foreign Minister Dismisses U.S. Peace Efforts - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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In a blunt and belligerent speech on his first day as Israel’s new foreign minister, the hawkish nationalist Avigdor Lieberman declared Wednesday that “those who wish for peace should prepare for war” and that Israel was not obligated by understandings on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict reached at an American-sponsored peace conference in late 2007.
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“Those who think that through concessions they will gain respect and peace are wrong,” Mr. Lieberman said during a transfer ceremony at the Foreign Ministry. “It is the other way around; it will lead to more wars.”
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The aim of the Annapolis process, as it became known, was to agree on the framework for a Palestinian state alongside Israel by the end of 2008, a goal that was not achieved. Mr. Lieberman said that the Israeli government “never ratified Annapolis, nor did Parliament,” and that it therefore “has no validity.”
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As the new prime minister, Mr. Netanyahu has tried to strike a more conciliatory tone, promising to hold negotiations with the Palestinian Authority toward a permanent accord. But he has also stopped short of endorsing the two-state solution, putting the new government at odds with the United States and the European Union.
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Tony Blair, the special envoy of the so-called quartet of Middle East peacemakers, which consists of the United States, the European Union, the United Nations and Russia, said Wednesday that the peace process was in “very great jeopardy.”
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He once advocated bombing the Aswan dam in the event of a war with Egypt, and last year he suggested that Egypt’s president should “go to hell” if he did not want to visit Israel.
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Often contradictory and contrary in his positions, Mr. Lieberman, a resident of a Jewish settlement in the West Bank, has said that he advocates the creation of a viable Palestinian state. Yet in January 2008 he pulled his party out of the last governing coalition, led by Ehud Olmert and the centrist Kadima Party, in protest against the Annapolis-inspired talks.
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Mr. Lieberman said on Wednesday that instead of Annapolis, Israel was committed to the “road map,” a 2003 American-backed performance-based peace plan that made the creation of a Palestinian state contingent on the Palestinians ending all violence and dismantling terrorist networks.Mr. Erekat, the Palestinian negotiator, noted that the plan also called for Israel to freeze all settlement construction. “I’d really like to know, are we going to see a settlement freeze?” Mr. Erekat said.