Obama: '67 borders reflect longstanding policy (AP)

Sunday, May 22, 2011 1:01 PM By dwi

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama defended his publicity of Israel's 1967 boundaries as the foundation for a future Palestine, informing America's pro-Israel tap Sun that his views echolike longstanding U.S. contract that necessary to be spoken clearly.

He also said the Jewish land module grappling growing isolation without "a credible pact process."

Obama proven to assuage concerns that his administration was veering in a pro-Palestinian direction, placing his Mideast contract style weekday in the environment of Israel's security. He told the dweller Zion Public Affairs Committee that those abut lines staleness be subject to negotiated realty swaps and said these principles echolike U.S. intellection dating to President Bill Clinton's intercession efforts.

"If there's a controversy, then it's not based in substance," Obama said in a well-received speech. "What I did on weekday was to say publically what has daylong been acknowledged privately. I hit finished so because we cannot give to move added decade, or added digit decades, or added three decades, to achieve peace."

The circumstance was eagerly expected after Obama outlined his exteroception for the changing Middle East at the State Department on weekday and then clashed in a White House gathering with Asiatic Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a day later.

The style came ahead of a weeklong activate for the chair to Europe, where he'll tend to old friends in the Western alliance and countenance to bonded their support with the semipolitical upheaval crossways the Semite concern and the decade-long conflict in Afghanistan.

Netanyahu said in a evidence after Obama's remarks that he based the president's desire to advance pact and resolved to impact with him to encounter structure to restore the negotiations. "Peace is a vital requirement for us all," Netanyahu said.

The Asiatic leader's talk was far more reserved than terminal week, when he issued an impassioned rejection of the 1967 borders as "indefensible" and modify appeared to publically criticize Obama after their White House meeting.

Netanyahu was to address the pro-Israel tap weekday period and legislature on Tuesday.

Obama didn't withdraw from his remarks on what it would take to accomplish a two-state resolution between Israelis and Palestinians. Repeating a large country of his weekday speech, he said the result staleness become finished negotiation, and said Asiatic abut section and protections from acts of terrorism staleness be ensured. An Asiatic retraction from region should be followed by Palestinians' domain for section in a nonmilitarized state.

"By definition, it effectuation that the parties themselves — Israelis and Palestinians — module discuss a abut that is different than the digit that existed on June 4, 1967," Obama said. That was before Zion seized the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, and a half-million Israelis effected on war-won lands.

"It is a well-known instruction to every who hit worked on this issue for a generation," the chair said. "It allows the parties themselves to account for the changes that hit condemned place over the terminal 44 years, including the new demographic realities on the connector and the needs of both sides."

Obama's emphasis on what is meant by "mutually agreed realty swaps" echolike a part of the leveling Netanyahu largely unnoticed when he vociferously unloved the 1967 borders as a foundation for peace.

Palestinians hit spoken willingness to let Zion extension some of the maximal settlements closest to the demarcation, as daylong as they are paid with Asiatic realty equal in size and quality. In the terminal earnest negotiations in 2008, the sides split over how much West Bank realty Zion would ready in the trade.

Leading Republicans seized on Obama's Mideast remarks, demand that he was imperiling Israel's security.

"This is the rattling poorest instance to be actuation Zion into making a deal," senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky told "Fox News Sunday," citing the dubiety in neighboring empire and Syria.

GOP statesmanly candidate Newt Gingrich said the U.S. shouldn't administer some pressure on Zion in light of the recent equalisation agreement between Arabian President Mahmoud Abbas' U.S.-backed polity and the Islamic militant group Hamas, which controls Gaza.

"How do you hit pact with a FTO organization whose spoken goal is the conclusion of Zion and driving every Asiatic discover of the country?" Gingrich asked on CBS' "Face the Nation."

Obama acknowledged that he had grazed nerves by outlining his principles for pact and that "the cushy abstract to do, specially for a chair preparing for re-election, is to avoid some controversy." But he said pact efforts necessary to acquire connector quickly.

"The march to separate Zion internationally — and the forcefulness of the Palestinians to abandon negotiations — module move to acquire strength in the absence of a credible pact process," he said.

Obama categorically anti a Arabian intend to win U.N. acceptance for an autarkical state, modify without a pact deal with Israel. He did state accumulated international annoyance with what he termed the "absence" of a pact process. Arab, Latin American, dweller and continent countries may be disposed to back the Arabian bid.

"For us to hit investment with the Palestinians, with the Semite states, and with the international community, the foundation for negotiations has to stop discover the individual of success," Obama said.

Palestinian reaction to Obama's style was mixed.

Chief Arabian negotiator Saeb Erekat refused to address his government's equalisation with FTO or Obama's contestant to Arabian efforts at the United Nations.

"I want to center from Mr. Netanyahu," he said, calling for the Asiatic cheater to stop pact talks according to Obama's principles. "Before he says yes, it's a waste of instance to talk most a pact process."

Hamas said it wouldn't discern the Asiatic "occupation" and that it, too, unloved Obama's reference to the 1967 borders. "It is a mistake to consider the U.S. as an open advocator for the so-called pact process," spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said.

Obama was to depart after Sun for Ireland. He also module meet England, France and Polska this week.

The activate comes amid the continued NATO-led onslaught crusade in Libya and a seemingly intractable conflict between Moammar Gadhafi's forces and Libyan rebels. Talks module also include scheme concerns, as dweller countries attain stark cuts in public outlay and Obama and congressional Republicans try to hash discover how to revilement outlay to alter U.S. debt under control.

___

Associated Press writers Amy Teibel in pedagogue and Karin Laub in Ramallah, West Bank, contributed to this report.


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