The Labor Party’s newly elected leader, Neil Kinnock, said in an interview today that the Palestine Liberation Organization, “as a representative movement of the Palestinian people,” must be involved in the Middle East peace process.
At the same time, he told the monthly journal of the Labor Middle East Council, a party pressure group, that a solution to the problems of the Mideast “should include the establishment of a Palestinian state and labor must give full support to the right of the Palestinians to self-determination.” Kinnock, who succeeded Michael Foot as Labor Party leader last Sunday, asserted that the involvement of the PLO was a prerequisite to successful Mideast negotiations. He said a Palestinian state should encompass the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. He added that any peace agreement would have to include the dismantling of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza.
His comments in the interview in the party journal, which was published today, followed the general line of recent Labor Party Mideast policy.
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