Arab League chief calls for re-launching Mideast peace process

Arab League (AL) Secretary General Amr Moussa has called for re-launching the Mideast peace process with a timescale, saying that the Mideast peace process is still moribund, Egypt's MENA news agency reported on Friday.

Moussa made the call at a forum at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies that was also attended by Arab and foreign ambassadors and intellectuals, MENA said.

At the occasion, the AL chief noted that the Arab world is passing through a very sensitive stage full of fateful issues and the Arab-Israeli conflict would determine the direction of the Mideast peace process.

The U.S. administration still has time to correct its policies in Iraq, in particular, and in the Mideast, in general, Moussa said, while warning of the tense situation in Lebanon

Talking on a recent report released by the U.S. bipartisan Iraq Study Group (ISG), or the Baker-Hamilton commission, Moussa lauded its recommendation for talks with Iran and Syria on the situation in Iraq, asserting that isolating any country would not resolve any problem.

He called for holding an Iraqi national reconciliation conference in Baghdad within four months.

On the Palestine issue, Moussa held that there was a chance for forming a national unity government in the territories as the current governing Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) approved establishing a Palestinian state along the 1967 borders while the Israeli side has said that it was ready to accept the Arab peace initiative floated by the Beirut Summit.

Source: Xinhua