Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa today that the international community is responding positively to Arab efforts to reactivate the Arab Peace Initiative. The initiative was proposed by then-Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdulaziz and adopted at the Beirut 2002 summit, and support for the initiative was reaffirmed in the Riyadh Declaration of March 2007.

In a press conference, Moussa said that the Quartet has received Arab proposals on reactivating the initiative, and that it is meeting to discuss them. There has been no response yet from Israel, Moussa said.

Moussa stressed the importance of continuing negotiations to stop the violence in Palestine, and noted that such negotiations should be conducted by the respective parties themselves – Israel, the Palestinians, and Syria.

The secretary-general also denied that Arab countries are supporting one Palestinian faction over another.

In related news, the EU Commissioner for External Relations, Benita Ferrero-Waldner, highlighted the importance of supporting the Arab Peace Initiative in a speech to the European Parliament in Brussels today.

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