Arriving in Tel Aviv, Annan says bloodshed must stop, peace talks begin
9 October -- Arriving in Tel Aviv today on an urgent mission to help in diffusing the Middle East crisis, Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged all parties involved - from leaders to ordinary citizens - to say no to violence and to shift the action from the street to the negotiating table.
"I am hopeful that we can control the situation, but this cannot be done by the leaders alone," the Secretary-General said after his arrival this evening at Ben Gurion airport. "We all are responsible for society, individually and collectively, and we need you, the ordinary citizens, ordinary men and women, to reject violence and the use of force and reach out for peace, even if at times it seems elusive."
The Secretary-General noted that while he had come "without a magic wand," he intended to listen to the leaders in the region and to work with them to see how together they could find a solution to the crisis.
"The bloodshed must stop and the conflict must not be allowed to spread," Mr. Annan stressed. "The time is short; the stakes are high; the price of failure is more than any one of us wants to pay."
Upon his arrival, the Secretary-General met Israel's acting Foreign Minister, Shlomo Ben Ami. Mr. Annan then flew to Gaza for a meeting with Yasser Arafat, the President of the Palestinian Authority. On Tuesday, the Secretary-General is expected to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak.
The Secretary-General decided to travel to the region "in view of the increasingly precarious situation in the Middle East, which carries the risk of a major conflagration," according to a statement released by his spokesman in New York on Sunday. Mr. Annan headed to the Middle East with the backing of the two parties and other key actors, as well as the President of the Security Council, all of whom have "expressed their full support for this initiative," according to the spokesman.
Mr. Annan also plans to meet other top-level officials in the Middle East, the spokesman said, noting that in recent days the Secretary-General has been in constant contact with leaders in the region, as well as with other concerned governments.
The spokesman noted that Mr. Annan was "fully aware that this will be a difficult mission" with an uncertain outcome, but added that "the stakes are so high -- not least in terms of innocent lives -- that he feels it is his duty to expend every effort, in conjunction with those being undertaken by others in the international community, to lower tensions and restore the peace process."
On Saturday, Mr. Annan released a statement appealing to the parties to rein in their forces and supporters so as to give the ongoing efforts to restore the peace process the best chance of success. The Secretary-General also appealed to the parties to respect relevant resolutions of the Security Council as well as humanitarian norms. In addition, he urged each side to maintain the inviolability of religious sites "since all must understand that true faith demands respect for the beliefs of others."
The Secretary-General's statement was issued in response to the alarming violence between Palestinians and Israelis, which had spread to the border between Israel and Lebanon and to the Shaba farms area of the Golan Heights. Mr. Annan stressed that "the most urgent task is to break the current cycle of violence and to stop the senseless killing which have brought tragedy to so many families."
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