PA unhappy with 'incomplete' Quartet peace initiative

Peace plan doesn't include preconditions of settlement freeze or return to 1967 borders, PA Foreign Minister Riad Malki emphasizes.

By KHALED ABU TOAMEH
Riad Malki 311 (photo credit: REUTERS/Mohamad Torokman )
Riad Malki 311
(photo credit: REUTERS/Mohamad Torokman )
The Palestinian Authority is unhappy with the Quartet’s latest initiative to launch peace talks with Israel because it is “incomplete,” PA Foreign Minister Riad Malki said on Saturday.
He pointed out that the initiative, which was launched over the weekend after PA President Mahmoud Abbas submitted to UN General-Secretary Ban Ki-moon an official request for full membership in the UN, does not call for a cessation of settlement construction or for a pullout to the pre-1967 lines.
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“The only new thing that that the Quartet carries is a time line for discussing the issues of security and borders,” Malki said.
The Quartet urged Israelis and Palestinians to return to the negotiating table based on a new time line of December 2012 by which a final status agreement would end the conflict.
The Palestinians, meanwhile, have their eyes set towards Monday, when the UN Security Council is scheduled to discuss Abbas’s application for full membership of a Palestinian state.
Malki expressed hope that the Security Council would vote in favor of the request. He added that the PA was continuing its efforts to persuade additional countries to back the request.
Chief PLO negotiator Saeb Erekat said that the PA leadership would discuss the Quartet initiative in the coming days.
A number of Palestinian factions, including the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and Hamas, also rejected the Quartet plan, claiming it was designed to "foil" Palestinian aspirations for independence.
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