8/3/2002
Parliament President Backs Saudi Peace Plan

Speaking this week before an official visit to Poland, European Parliament President Pat Cox said that the recent spiral of violence in the Middle East demonstrated that "tragically, the situation is now locked into the politics of the last atrocity, when each new atrocity is an escalation of the previous one."

Pat Cox referred to an emergency meeting which he had held in Brussels last week with all the Arab ambassadors to the European Union to discuss the peace plan put forward by Saudi Arabia. The unequivocal message from the great majority of Arab States was the existence of a constant and comprehensive interest in pressing ahead with these proposals, said Mr Cox. Once certain essential details have been filled in and the plan formally announced, it should represent a historic and unprecedented offer to Israel and the only creative initiative currently on the table capable of breaking the current deadlock, he said.

Pat Cox saluted the indefatigable efforts in the cause of peace of EU High Representative Javier Solana, and stressed that the European Union should now strongly urge the United States to help break the vicious circle of atrocities and counter-atrocities in Israel and the Palestinian territories by lending its active support to the Saudi plan.