French FM: Peace confab is impartial, will go ahead

French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault says the peace conference his country is organizing to take place next month is just the beginning of a process aimed at bringing Israelis and Palestinian to the negotiating table, and rejects Netanyahu’s dismissal of the confab as not impartial.

Speaking at Ben Gurion airport after a fleeting visit to the region to meet with Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Ayrault says the conference is not a replacement for direct negotiations.

“It’ clear to us — and I said it to Netanyhau and Abbas — that we cannot fulfill the role of the two sides,” Ayrault says. “They will need to carry out direct negotiations but because the process is stuck they need external help. The goal [of the conference] is to help them return to the negotiating table.”

Ayrault says a second conference will take place “some time in the autumn.”

Netanyhau told Ayrault this morning that France’s “scandalous decision” to vote in favor of a UNESCO resolution “which doesn’t recognize the millennia-old connection between the Jewish people and the Temple Mount casts a shadow on France’s evenhandedness in any forum it’s trying to convene.”

Ayrault says the opposition does not weaken France’s resolve and the conference will take place next month as planned.

— Raoul Wootliff