China Urges UN to Pay Greater Attention to Middle East

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Thursday, February 28, 2002

China Urges UN to Pay Greater Attention to Middle East

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China on Tuesday urged the United Nations Security Council to pay greater attention to the Middle East problem so as to help halt the violence between Israel and Palestine and ease tensions in the region.

Addressing an open meeting of the Security Council on the Middle East situation, Chinese Permanent Representative to the U.N., Wang Yingfan, said the Security Council should play a role in easing the tension in the Middle East and bringing about the resumption of peace talks.

China hopes that members of the Security Council will take a constructive attitude toward the Middle East problem, Wang said.

Stressing that China opposes Israeli military strikes and economic blockades against Palestine and acts of jeopardizing the lives and property of Palestinian civilians, Wang said that the continuing escalation of the violence between Israel and Palestine demonstrated that using violence to stop violence leads nowhere and that peace talks provide the only way toward peace.

The Chinese government has once and again pointed out that maintaining the Palestinian authority led by Yasser Arafat is conducive to easing the Middle East tension and helpful to the resumption of Israel-Palestine talks, Wang said.

Isolating Arafat and restricting his freedom of movement would not serve this purpose and on the contrary, lead to the opposite, he added.

In his address, Wang also mentioned some important ideas put forth by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, such as "the lack of mutual confidence between the two sides makes a third-party rule essential" and "security has to be addressed alongside key political issues, particularly the question of land, and the economic and social issues, including the increasingly critical desperate conditions of the Palestinians."

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