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Kerry told Abbas he would attend peace meeting in Paris: Palestinian official

Xinhua, May 16, 2016 Adjust font size:

A Palestinian official said on Monday that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry had informed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas that he would attend a ministerial consultative meeting ahead of an international peace conference in Paris next month.

On Friday, U.S. State Department Spokesperson John Kerby said in a daily press briefing that Kerry spoke with Abbas on Thursday, but he said he had no update on the planned French meeting.

Saeb Erekat, secretary general of Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Executive Committee, told the official Palestinian radio station that Kerry phoned Abbas and officially informed him that he intended to attend the meeting that will be held in the French capital in the first week of June.

Erekat added that the conference was supposed to be held before the end of May, but was postponed for a few days in order to meet the schedules of Kerry and some other officials, to allow them to attend the get-together.

The radio station said Erekat noted "France's determination to hold an international peace conference and to prepare for it, especially after it became clearer to them that the Israeli government is destroying the two-state solution, flagrantly violates the international law and has not honored agreements it has signed with the Palestinian side."

The PLO official said that French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, when meeting Abbas on Sunday in Ramallah, said his country will "go forward to organize the international conference by starting with a ministerial consultative meeting in early June, to be attended by over 20 states."

Regarding the Israeli opposition to the French initiative, Erekat said that "there is a valuable international movement" and France's determination to hold the conference in the presence of permanent members of the UN Security Council, including the U.S., "made Netanyahu come out and accuse France of bias."

The previous round of peace talks between Israel and Palestine have been stalled since April 2014. The U.S.-sponsored talks that lasted for nine months achieved no tangible results. Endit