BICOM

French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said yesterday that the French are ready to transform an international donors’ conference, due to be held in Paris, into a ‘broader political conference involving the negotiation process’ if the international Middle East Quartet so requests. Juppe met with Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad in Ramallah and called the breakdown in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks untenable and said the summit would be an expansion of a planned economic conference, also referred to as Paris II, to bring together both sides.

The peace plan Juppe presented in Ramallah is largely based on US President Barack Obama’s speech last month, which called for a resumption of Palestinian-Israeli negotiations based on 1967 borders with agreed land swaps. The French initiative, however, set a one-year deadline for resolving the issues of Jerusalem and refugees, which Obama referred to without time-lines.

Responding to the idea of a French peace conference, the US did not commit or dismiss the idea and said that they are looking for a variety of ways to reach the goal of bringing the Israelis and Palestinians back to the negotiating table. Official Palestinian sources told the German Press-Agency DPA that Abbas told Juppe, after an earlier meeting in Rome, that he would convene with the Palestinian leadership to discuss the plan before he gives his final answer. Meanwhile, the Jerusalem Post reports that Israel could be considering the French proposal for a peace summit to jump-start talks, and as a way to divert support away from the Palestinian initiative in the UN General Assembly in September.

On Wednesday, Juppe met with his Israeli counterpart Avigdor Lieberman and on Thursday met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem.