UN Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar warned here that without a breakthrough for peace in the Middle East — “including the Palestine Liberation Organization” — war can engulf the region once again.
“The situation in the region continues to be highly volatile,” de Cuellar said in his annual report to the General Assembly, issued Thursday, on the situation in the Mideast. “There is a grave danger that if the present deadlock in the peace process is allowed to persist, major hostilities will break out again in the area as has happened several times in the past,” the Secretary General stated.
De Cuellar recalled that the Yom Kippur War between Egypt and Israel in 1973 almost led to direct confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union. He warned that a new war in the Mideast, “with the development of ever more sophisticated and destructive weapons,” may be more difficult to control and may indeed bring a nuclear confrontation between the superpowers.
“A just and lasting peace (in the Mideast) can best be achieved through a comprehensive settlement covering all aspects of the conflict and involving all the parties concerned, including the Palestine Liberation Organization,” de Cuellar said.
A comprehensive Mideast settlement, he continued, must be based on “withdrawal of Israeli forces from Arab territories occupied since June 1967; acknowledgement and respect for the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of all the states in the region and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries; and finally a satisfactory solution of the Palestinian problem based on the recognition of the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people, including self-determination.”
The Secretary General was critical of Israel’s settlements in the West Bank. “I am particularly concerned about the consequences that would flow from the establishment by Israel of additional settlements in the occupied territories,” de Cuellar said, adding: “This is a matter of deep concern and, more than any other single factor, contributes to doubts in the minds of many about Israel’s readiness to negotiate a peace settlement that would require its withdrawal from the territories.”
But the Secretary General also was critical of violent incidents in the region as a major obstacle to peace. “Peace efforts would be enhanced if there was a lessening of violent incidents, which all too frequently involve innocent lives and of which there have been some particularly terrible examples” in the last year, he stated.
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