Israeli official urges Arabs to accept Saudi peace plan

UNITED NATIONS — Israel's foreign minister welcomed a revived Saudi peace plan Wednesday and called on Arab and Muslim leaders to establish ties with the Jewish state without waiting for a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In an interview with the Arab television channel Al-Arabiya, Tzipi Livni said normalizing relations with Israel would send a message to moderates in the Palestinian Authority to push for normalizing relations "and to accept the ideas of peace."

Last week, the Arab League said it would relaunch the 2002 initiative at a summit March 28-29 in Saudi Arabia in an effort to end the decades-long conflict with Israel.

The initiative would offer Israel full recognition and permanent peace with the Arab states in return for Israeli withdrawal to 1967 lines, the establishment of an independent Palestine with East Jerusalem as its capital, and "an agreed, just solution" to the issue of Palestinian refugees.

Egypt, Syria and the Palestinians insist the land-for-peace offer should not be changed.

But Livni has said Israel would not accept the plan as is and urged that it drop any reference to the right of Palestinians displaced during the 1948 Mideast war to return to their homes inside the Jewish state.

The five-year-old Saudi Arabian regional peace plan appears to be displacing the U.S.'s dormant "road map" as the initiative to get Arabs and Israelis back to the table.

After initially rejecting the plan, Israel this week praised the proposal as a new starting point for talks. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has said he saw "positive elements" in it.

The road map, first introduced in 2002, focused on confidence-building measures as a prerequisite for Israeli-Palestinian peace talks — fighting extremists on the Palestinian side and dismantling unauthorized settlement outposts on the Israeli side — but the process has been mothballed as neither side met their commitment.

The Saudi initiative, by contrast, seeks agreement on a set of principles for Arab-Israeli peace as a jumping off point for regional negotiations.

Considering those principles represents a departure for Israel. It traditionally has preferred bilateral rather than multilateral talks because, analysts say, they fear having solutions imposed on them.

The plan is seen as highlighting Saudi Arabia's role as a regional counterweight to Iran's growing influence in the region.

It also fills a vacuum of diplomacy at a time when U.S. influence in the Middle East has been constrained by growing violence in Iraq and little progress on Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.