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Putin, Erdogan agree on Palestine

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MOSCOW: Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday said they both supported creating a Palestinian state, the Kremlin said the day after the UN rejected the decision by Washington to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.


In a phone call, the two leaders “discussed the situation of Middle East peace talks in the context of the resolution adopted by the UN General Assembly on the status of Jerusalem,” the Kremlin said in a statement.


They “confirmed the mutual disposition to continue to assist in resolving the Palestine-Israeli conflict on the basis of international norms and realisation of the right of the Palestinian people to create an independent state,” it said.


Meanwhile, Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas said that he would “no longer accept” any peace plan proposed by the United States, dealing a pre-emptive blow to a fresh initiative expected by Washington next year.


The comments came hours after 128 members of the United Nations voted to condemn US President Donald Trump’s decision on December 6 to unilaterally move.


That move continues to reverberate in the Middle East and European diplomats are pessimistic about the Trump administration’s peace plan which is being prepared behind closed doors and will be presented to both sides in 2018. US Vice-President Mike Pence postponed a trip he was due to make to the region this week, after Palestinian and Arab Christian leaders expressed reluctance to meet him.


“The United States has proven to be a dishonest mediator in the peace process and we will no longer accept any plan from it,” Abbas told a joint press conference with French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris.


Macron repeated his earlier condemnations of the US decision on Jerusalem, but he also ruled out recognising Palestine as a state unilaterally, which France has mooted previously. — Agencies


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