Haaretz
Kislev 20, 5767
United Nations Secretary-General Kofi
Annan said on Monday that trying to end the Arab-Israeli war would help
cool other Middle East hot-spots like Iraq and Lebanon.
In his
final report on the Middle East before stepping down on December 31, Annan
also said the quartet of international Middle East mediators appeared
increasingly powerless to help move down the path toward peace, due to
internal divisions, and needed a fresh start.
He said the quartet
members - the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United
Nations - had to join together to revive the peace process and involve
Israel and Arab states directly in its work, as promised in
September.
"Overall, the instability that prevails in the Middle
East is the greatest regional challenge to international peace and
security, and needs to be addressed far more thoroughly than it has been
to date," Annan said in a report to the 15-nation Security Council to be
presented on Tuesday.
After 10 years as secretary-general, Annan
hands over to South Korean Ban Ki-Moon on January 1.
"I am
convinced that the search for stability in Iraq, Lebanon and elsewhere
will be greatly served by a concerted effort" to achieve a Middle East
peace, Annan said.
"A regional approach is needed to resolve the
various crises and conflicts in the Middle East today, not least because
progress in each arena is to a large extent dependent on progress in
others."
The Iraq Study Group, led by former U.S. Secretary of
State James Baker, told the Bush administration last week it must launch a
"renewed and sustained commitment" to solve the Arab-Israeli conflict as
part of an effort to address broader regional tensions in Iraq and
elsewhere.
Olmert, however, said it was wrong to link the
Arab-Israeli war with wider Middle East concerns, saying the region "has a
lot of problems that are not connected to us."
Annan urged the
council and the quartet to make a fresh start by working together to
strengthen a cease-fire in Gaza, extend it to the West Bank and deploy
international observers or some other mechanism to monitor it and protect
civilians.
The two should also promote unconditional and open-ended
talks between the Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority
Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and set out an updated, credible political
framework for those negotiations, he added.
Annan pressed Syria to
show its immediate neighbors - which include Lebanon and Iraq - that it is
committed to regional peace and security. He also told Israel there could
be no peace until it returned the Golan Heights to Syria.