EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said on Monday that Palestine may become an independent and viable sovereign nation within the next two years.
She said that close cooperation between the Mideast Quartet members and the Arab League was key to bringing peace to the Middle East through their public support of bringing Israel and Palestine to the table to renew bilateral talks.
"We urge regional governments publicly support the resumption of bilateral (Palestinian-Israeli) negotiations," Ashton told journalists after a ministerial meeting of the 27 countries in the European Union in Brussels.
The Quartet condemned Israel's illegal settlement plans and gave the sides 24 months to renew talks and the same time to form an independent Palestinian state. The Palestinians welcomed the Quartet's announcement, whereas the Israelis criticized it.
"We are strongly supporting your efforts to establish an independent and viable Palestinian state," Ban Ki-moon said after meeting Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad in the West Bank city of Ramallah on Saturday.
Ashton said the 27 EU foreign ministers supported the Quartet's announcement.
Ban was in Moscow March 18-19 for the Quartet meeting when Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton and the Quartet's special representative Tony Blair called on Israel to freeze all Israeli settlement activity in East Jerusalem and pledged to use all powers to resume Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
"The world has condemned Israel's settlement plans in east Jerusalem," Ban said. "Let us be clear. All settlement activity is illegal anywhere in occupied territory and must be stopped."
Settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, both occupied by Israel since the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, has been the main obstacle to reviving peace talks.
Under the internationally agreed roadmap for Middle East peace, Israel is obliged to freeze all settlement construction activity and remove unauthorized outposts built since 2001 from Palestinian territories.
BRUSSELS, March 22 (RIA Novosti)
