World Leaders Back 'Geneva' Mideast Peace Plan

Monday, December 1, 2003
(5:16 PM ET)
By Robert Evans

Reuters Writer

The "Geneva Initiative" was co-authored by former Israeli government minister Yossi Beilin, an architect of the now almost defunct 1993 Oslo peace accords, and former Palestinian minister Yasser Abed Rabbo. It goes further than Oslo by mandating the removal of most Jewish settlements in Palestinian areas and splitting Jerusalem, occupied in 1967 but annexed unilaterally later by Israel, into the capitals of Israel and a new Palestinian state.

GENEVA -- Reuters
World leaders past and present voiced firm support Monday for an unofficial Middle East peace plan shaped by regional "doves" but denounced as treason by both Israeli officials and Palestinian militants.

As its authors, self-proclaimed moderates from both sides of Palestinian-Israeli divide, launched the plan at a ceremony in Geneva, senior figures around the globe called it a ray of hope in one of the most intractable international conflicts.

"The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has taken far too great a toll already. Both peoples have paid dearly in lives and livelihood in a war which both are losing," declared a statement from 58 former presidents, prime ministers and U.N. officials.

Hailed at the two-hour ceremony by former President Jimmy Carter as offering an end to bloodshed, the plan also won messages of support from King Mohammed of Morocco, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and Bill Clinton, U.S. president from 1993 to 2001.

Swiss Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey dubbed it "a little light in the darkness." And at the United Nations in New York, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said the initiative had caught the imagination of both peoples.

"They should inspire in all the burning conviction that a settlement can be achieved," he said.

* PALESTINIANS PROTEST

(More: Netscape Network News with CNN)
2003 © Reuters, Ltd.

Dan