France says it鈥檚 set to recognize Palestinian state
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FRANCE said yesterday it would recognise a Palestinian state if an international effort to overcome the impasse between Israelis and Palestinians failed, and proposed a two-year timeframe to end the conflict through a United Nations-backed resolution.
Lawmakers will hold a symbolic parliamentary vote next Tuesday on whether the French government should recognize Palestine as a state, a move that the Israeli Prime Minister has called a “grave mistake.” But that would not mark a top-level change in French policy.
“If this final effort to reach a negotiated solution fails, then France will have to do what it takes by recognizing without delay the Palestinian state,” Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said yesterday.
The parliamentary vote has raised domestic political pressure for the government to be more active on the issue.
An IFOP poll showed 63 percent of French support a Palestinian state.
Fabius told parliament that, were deputies to adopt the motion, it would not change Paris’ immediate diplomatic stance. But he said that after similar moves in Sweden, Britain, Ireland and Spain, Paris couldn’t ignore the “never-ending” conflict that was playing into extremists’ hands.
“There needs to be support, some would say pressure from the international community to help the two sides make the final step to peace,” he said.
Palestinians seek statehood in the West Bank and Gaza Strip — lands captured by Israel in a 1967 war.
Fabius said France is working with partners to get a UN Security Council resolution adopted that would conclude negotiations within two years.
“We must fix a calendar because without one how do you convince anybody that it won’t just be another process?” he said.
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