Peres: EU should ease pressure, give peace talks a chance

The European Union needs to ease its pressure on Israel and the Palestinian Authority to allow the sides to negotiate and reach an agreement, President Shimon Peres said Wednesday.

The statement came two weeks after the EU published new guidelines prohibiting cooperation from the start of 2014 with any Israeli body operating in the West Bank, a move Brussels said helped push Israel to the negotiating table.

Peres made the statement while visiting Lithuania, which currently holds the EU’s rotating presidency, after meeting with his counterpart Dalia Grybauskaitė in Vilnius.

“If the EU wants to help the peace process, and it does, it should let the sides work to reach an agreement without pressure,” Peres said.

The new EU directive, pilloried by Jerusalem, extends to “all funding, cooperation, and the granting of scholarships, research grants and prizes” to Israeli entities in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Peres said that EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton told him she’d discuss postponing the initiative at the upcoming non-official gathering of the union’s foreign ministers.

At a meeting with Grybauskaitė earlier in the day, the Israeli president said that a future peace treaty, when signed between the sides, will address all issues, including the borders, thus making the issue of settlements and Israel’s presence in the West Bank redundant.

Grybauskaitė told Peres she’d do her best to discuss the issue of putting sanctions on the Jewish settlements with member countries.

Peres’s meeting came a day after Israeli and Palestinian negotiators convened in Washington to agree on a new round of peace talks, expected to last nine months and address all final-status issues.

The announcement drew widespread international praise after a three-year hiatus in peace talks.

“I welcome the resumption of direct talks between the Israeli and Palestinian negotiating teams in Washington DC and commend once again Secretary of State John Kerry’s efforts in achieving what is a crucial first step towards a lasting peace,” Ashton’s office said in a statement Wednesday.

At a meeting of the United Nation’s Committee on the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People Wednesday, Vice-Chairman Rodolfo Reyes Rodriguez said Palestinians would restart their diplomatic drive for unilateral recognition and engage in peaceful popular resistance should the talks fail.