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Clinton Vows to Get Mideast Peace Process Going
US President Bill Clinton vowed to get the faltered Middle East peace process going, saying, "We cannot afford to fail."
Addressing the opening ceremony of the Middle East summit held here, Clinton said, "We are serious and we want to achieve three objectives."
The US president called for an end of the violence and the restoration of security cooperation in the region.
He urged for a fact-finding mission to investigate into the most serious clashes between the Israelis and Palestinians in years and to prevent a recurrence. He called on the two sides to achieve an agreement in this regard.
He vowed to revive the Middle East peace process which is bogged down in the more than two weeks of the Israeli-Palestinian bloodshed.
The bloody clashes, triggered by the provocative visit by Israeli opposition Likud party leader Ariel Sharon to a the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest site for Muslims, in East Jerusalem on September 28, have claimed around 100 lives, most of them Palestinians, and injured more than 3,000 others.
"The future of the peace process and the stability of the region are at stake," Clinton said, urging both sides to remember how far they have come since 1993 when they agreed to resume the peace
process.
The summit was called to end the violence on the West Bank and Gaza and Israel and restart the Mideast peace process.
"We want to get the negotiations started again," Clinton said.
The summit host, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, also called for saving the credibility of the peace process in his opening remarks. However, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak told Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak after arriving here Monday morning that he will not pull back Israeli forces or reopen Palestinian areas until Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat re-arrests dozens of militants released from Palestinian jails recently and tells security forces to stop shooting and participating in street clashes.
Barak also reiterated Israel's view of not accepting any kind of international investigation committee, but only a U.S.-led fact-finding team to probe the causes of the clashes.
Barak's show of non-compromise on the two key issues which will be on the agenda of the just-opened summit cast shadow over this latest peace efforts.
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