(MENAFN- Gulf Times) HE the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dr Khalid bin Mohamed al-Attiyah, has called for urgent steps to impose a just solution to the Palestinian issue under the UN resolutions and end the stalemate in the Middle East peace process.
Speaking before the UN Security Council open debate on "The Situation in the Middle East, including the Palestine Question", al-Attiyah said that a just and lasting solution should be based on withdrawal to the 1967 border and the two-state solution.
He said the UN council had met to discuss the volatile situation caused by the dangerous escalation of the Israeli occupation authorities (IOA), resulting from their policy of illegal settlements, suppression and discrimination against the Palestinian people, depriving them of their fundamental rights and freedom as well as sovereignty over their natural resources while becoming particularly vulnerable to attacks by Israeli extremists without any accountability.
Al-Attiyah stressed that the "Palestinian cause is important to the region and the world and is a priority for Arab nations".
He noted that the Palestinian people's fate was determined by the occupier. "The negotiations have lost value because they are conducted without any aims or agreed foundations," he said, referring to Israel's occupation of Jerusalem and the Golan Heights and the ruinous blockade on the Gaza Strip. He wondered whether the Israeli scheme of temporal division of Al Aqsa mosque would lead to a spatial division.
On the Syrian crisis, al-Attiyah slammed the international community's failure to solve it.
The regime in Syria, he said, had crossed all limits with the use of chemical weapons and explosive barrel bombs against its own people, waging a war of genocide and forcing mass displacement. Yet no one was lifting a finger, he said, adding that it was for this reason the regime still existed.
Despite numerous discussions about the Syrian issue, there had been no serious global efforts to provide protection to Syrian civilians.
The Foreign Minister said that there was a lot of talk about the fight against terrorism and it was our duty to eradicate it. "However, the Syrian people believe that the main problem is that the regime practises terrorism against its own people."
Dealing with the Syrian regime has turned unfortunately from being a regime which committed crimes against humanity to testing its usefulness in the fight against terrorism, al-Attiyah commented.
He urged "urgent and collective" action to implement the Geneva Communique of June 30, 2012, calling for the establishment of a transitional governing body that would "exercise full executive powers to achieve the goals of the Syrian people and the revolution and spare the region and the world the dangers of terrorism".
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