With prospects for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations fading, Pakistan told UN Security Council Thursday that Palestinian Authority's "impressive march" towards statehood is the only ray of hope in the pessimistic scenario for Middle East peace.
"Attainment of the goal of a Palestinian State by September 2011 is well within our grasp," Raza Bashir Tarar, Pakistan's deputy permanent representative to the UN said in the course of the 15-member Council's quarterly debate on the Middle East question. He recalled that during the Council's last debate on the Middle East, most speakers had lamented breakdown in Israeli-Palestinian direct negotiations and the implications for the region. "Three months later, the pall of gloom is heavier," he said adding "prospects for resuming the talks are not encouraging and that the slight window of opportunity for sustainable peace created by the recent reduction in violence, appears to be slipping through our fingers".
To make matters worse, the Quartet - the diplomatic grouping comprising the United Nations, the United States, the European Union, and Russia - also appeared to be increasingly hamstrung in facilitating resumption of direct negotiations or specifying parameters of a final settlement as evidenced by the most recent postponement of its proposed meeting in Berlin. Amid such despair, the Security Council, too, has abdicated its role in the settlement of Palestine to individual countries and groupings. It is worrisome to note that the Council's only relevant activity is its quarterly open debates, where even spirited and well-crafted statements failed to cure the somnambulant of its audience, he maintained. The deputy permanent representative said that the only ray of hope is the impressive march of the Palestinian Authority on the road to statehood. The Pakistani delegate said that numerous independent sources have confirmed that completing that process by the end of August is well within the Palestinian Authority's reach. "The goal of Palestinian statehood by September 2011 is likewise well within our grasp; letting it founder on the rocks of cynicism, inaction or political expediency will have serious consequences for peace and stability," he said, recalling that failure to meet the 1999 deadline in the Oslo Accords had triggered second 'intifada'.