By SALAH NASRAWI, Associated Press Writer
Sun Mar 4, 1:38 PM ET
Arabs will relaunch a 2002 land-for-peace offer in an effort to end the decades-long conflict with Israel at a summit later this month, but without changes Israel has been pushing, the Arab League's Secretary-General said Sunday.
Amr Moussa's remarks to a meeting of Arab foreign ministers came as Saudi Arabia announced that hard-line Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad offered support for the initiative during talks with Saudi officials, though Iran later denied the two discussed the peace plan.
"The Arab peace initiative expresses an Arab consensus and will not be redrafted as demanded by some foreign powers," Moussa told the ministers, who were meeting in Cairo ahead of the Arab League summit scheduled for March 28-29 in the Saudi capital.
"Maneuvering and watering down (the initiative) will be a strategic mistake," Moussa said. "It perhaps will lead to new bloodshed.
Last week, Israeli newspapers quoted Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni as saying Israel would not accept the Arab peace plan as is and asked to drop any reference to the right of the Palestinians displaced in the 1948 Mideast war to return to their homes inside the Jewish state.
Moussa ...   more »

By Ryan Jones
Mar 04, 2007
Israeli Vice Premier Shimon Peres said on Saturday that the current government still very much intends to uproot thousands of Jews from Judea and Samaria and surrender their homes to the "Palestinians."
In an interview on Israel's Channel 2 TV, Peres stated matter-of-factly:
"The government will evacuate...dozens of settlements by the end of its term."
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert originally ran on a platform of additional "disengagement" from the biblical Land of Israel.
But his plummeting popularity following Israel's failures in last summer's Lebanon war called into question the ability to implement such a controversial policy, and Olmert put the issue on the back burner.
At the time, Olmert claimed that he had been forced to change his mind due to the fact that Israel's withdrawals from southern Lebanon and Gaza had brought increased violence instead of peace.
But the fact that Peres made his latest remarks at a time when hostility from Lebanon and Gaza continues unabated calls into question whether or not Olmert has really learned his lesson.
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