Israeli-Palestinian talks ‘are doomed’

TEHRAN, Friday

Hardline Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Friday that revived Middle East peace talks are “doomed” to fail and that the people of the region can “remove” Israel from the world scene.

Calling Western-backed Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas a “hostage” of Israel, Mr Ahmadinejad said the new peace talks which he began with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington on Thursday lacked legitimacy as he had no right to make concessions in the name of the Palestinian people.

“What do they want to negotiate about? Who are they representing? What are they going to talk about?” the Iranian president said of Abbas’s negotiating team.

“The people of Palestine and the region will not allow them to sell even an inch to the enemy. The negotiations are stillborn and doomed,” he said.

Iran is implacably opposed to the new peace talks and has given strong support to the Islamist Hamas movement which controls Gaza and which carried out two attacks against Israeli settlers in the West Bank that killed four people and cast a pall over the talks relaunch.

“The fate of Palestine will be decided in Palestine and by the resistance of Palestinians and not in Washington, Paris or London,” said Mr Ahmadinejad. (AFP)