The Bush administration welcomed the Arab League’s re-endorsement of the league’s peace plan. The plan, which was drawn up in Beirut in 2002, offers peace with Arab countries in return for Israel’s withdrawal from all lands occupied from the 1967 Six-Day War, the creation of a Palestinian state and a “just solution” for displaced Palestinians. Speaking in Washington Thursday after Arab leaders re-endorsed the plan at a summit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the plan could provide “a point of active diplomacy and as a way of energizing the push for peace in the Middle East. Their efforts and those of others have an important role to play.” Israel believes in “direct dialogue” with the Palestinian Authority, and that “moderate Arab states can fill a positive role by encouraging regional cooperation,” its Foreign Ministry said in a statement. However, Israel stopped short of endorsing the Saudi initiative. Israel and the United States had avoided the plan until now because it implicitly endorses a “right of return” for Palestinians; Israel and U.S. officials say they now believe that the Arab leaders are ready to roll back their insistence on that point.
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