(IsraelNN.com) Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman (Yisrael Beiteinu) and Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman will meet in Jerusalem Wednesday, but neither side wants to talk about it. The Egyptian government has issued no comment on the meeting, and Irene Ettinger, acting spokeswoman for the Israeli Foreign Minister, told Israel National News she would not make any statement because of the issue's “sensitivity”.
The sensitivity dates back to last October, when Lieberman, who heads Yisrael Beiteinu, said in a Knesset session that Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak can “go to hell” if he continues to refuse to visit Jerusalem. The only time Mubarak has visited Israel as president was to attend the funeral of assassinated former Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin.
President Shimon Peres and then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert apologized to Egypt for the remark, but Lieberman has stood his ground. A spokesman for his office said Wednesday morning that he has nothing to apologize for.
Egypt thinks otherwise. Its Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit said earlier this month of Lieberman, "He is a man who ought to reconsider how his brain communicates with his tongue” and that he would “keep his hands in his pockets” if the two men were to meet.
Egypt apparently has backed down from its threat not allow officials in face-to-face discussions with the Israeli Foreign Minister, but Suleiman is also marking his visit to Israel with visits to higher rankings officials, including President Peres and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. He also will meet with Defense Minister Ehud Barak and his deputy Matan Vilnai (Labor).
Foreign Minister Lieberman, who was born in the former Soviet Union, is molding a new image for Israel’s relationships with Russia and the United States as well as speaking more bluntly about policies towards the Palestinian Authority.
In an interview this week with the Russian daily Moskovskiy Komosolets, he played up ties with Russia and said, “Russia has a special influence in the Muslim world, and I consider it a strategic partner that should play a key role in the Middle East. I have argued for some time that Israel has insufficient appreciation for the 'Kremlin factor'; I intend to mend this gap," he said.
He also maintained that the United States “accepts all our decisions” despite his rejection of any binding commitment to the Annapolis, Maryland conference that called for the creation of a new PA state, effectively ignoring the stipulations in the American Roadmap plan.
Foreign Minister Lieberman stated that he accepts the Roadmap, which specifically requires the PA to halt violence and incitement against Israel. PA leaders said they "are not very familiar with the document." While not specifically rejecting the “two-state solution,” he added that is a nice slogan but has little meaning.
He reiterated his rejection of the Saudi Arabia “2002 Peace Plan” that calls for Israel to surrender all land, including Jerusalem neighborhoods, that was restored to the Jewish state in the Six-Day War in 1967. He said that the Saudi demand that Israel allow the immigration of several million Arabs claiming to be descendants of former Arab Israelis is a"recipe for Israel's destruction."
The Foreign Minister also asserted that Afghanistan and Pakistan, and not Iran, pose the greatest strategic threat to Israel. "Pakistan is nuclear and unstable, and Afghanistan is faced with a potential Taliban takeover, and the combination form a contiguous area of radicalism ruled in the spirit of Bin Laden," he explained.
No comments:
Post a Comment