London meeting presses Palestinian Authority for further concessions

Senior delegates from the “Quartet” responsible for President Bush’s “Road map for Peace in the Middle East”—the United States, United Nations, European Union and Russia—attended the meeting, as did representatives from over 20 countries, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Israel refused to send anyone to the gathering. The Likud-Labour coalition government of Ariel Sharon opposed Blair’s planned conference when he first floated it after Bush’s reelection last November. As far as Israel was concerned, any discussion on its own obligations or on “final status” issues related to the Road Map—the future of East Jerusalem, the borders of any Palestinian state, or the right of return for refugees—was illegitimate. With the Bush administration’s full support, Sharon insisted that the only subject open for discussion was how to best whip the PA into line. The British prime minister quickly altered the character of the assembly to meet these demands. It was not even possible to call the gathering a conference—only a “meeting.”

Abbas and other figures in the PA were highly sceptical about the event, and the Palestinian president only agreed to attend under pressure from Washington and after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced her attendance. According to the Guardian, “Palestinian officials said that after US and Israeli pressure forced Mr. Blair to abandon his original plan for a full peace conference to push forward political talks, the leadership feared that [the] meeting would do little more than set out a fresh series of targets for the Palestinians before a return to the Road Map peace process.”

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http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/mar2005/lond-m05.shtml