Government News Index
PM pleads for Mid East peace
News Interactive
31mar02
PRIME Minister John Howard has joined other world leaders in pleading for Israel and Palestine to stop tit-for-tat violence that is threatening to erupt into full scale war.
"I think what is happening in the Middle East is tragic beyond belief," Mr Howard told reporters in Sydney today.
"I join the president of the United States and many other world leaders in, in effect, pleading with those authorities and those in control to do everything they can to reduce the scale of violence."
Mr Howard made several comments in support of Israel, saying the ongoing conflict could have been ended in May 2000 if Palestine had accepted a generous peace deal from former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak.
"It's a terrible tragedy, a terrible indictment of the lack of leadership of the Palestinian cause that the offer of peace made by Ehud Barak - which involved 80 to 90 per cent of what the Palestinians wanted - was not taken up," Mr Howard said.
"Sadly, it's hard to see how any Israeli leader would have the authority now to make the kind of offer that Barak made ... and yet that offer was rejected."
Mr Howard suggested any lasting peace would rely on concessions from both sides.
"I have to say that everybody in the Middle East has to have a place in the sun if we are going to have a lasting peace," he said.
"There has to be respect for Israel's position and an understanding of what Israel has had to put up with.
"But there must also be a renewed affirmation of the right of the people of Palestine to have a homeland."
Mr Howard labelled the recent suicide bombings by young Palestinians as "the ultimate terror".
"It is very hard, indeed well near impossible, to take adequate precautions against that kind of behaviour," Mr Howard said.
"And you can only imagine the terror that must be in the hearts and minds of people in Israel.
"It is hard to understand how any nation ... can come to terms with people as young as 16, 17 and 18 who will destroy their own lives in the process of destroying the lives of others."