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Former UK envoy calls for arms embargo against Israel
Thursday, October 14, 2010 10:23:47 PM,
IRNA
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London:
Former British ambassador Lord Wright Thursday called for an EU
arms embargo to be imposed against Israel, warning that its
refusal to freeze illegal settlement activities is “genuine
threat” to peace.
“This flagrant disregard of President Obama's efforts to encourage
peace talks is now posing a genuine threat to hopes for a
two-nation peace settlement,” Wright said.
The refusal is “an ultimate threat not only to the creation of a
Palestinian state, but to the very future of Israel itself,” the
79-year old former ambassador to Syria and Saudi Arabia said.
Foreign Secretary William Hague has already called on the Israeli
regime to extend its partial freeze on illegal settlement and
extend it to East Jerusalem, while expressing concern that its
defiance could jeopardise peace negotiations.
Wright, who was also former head of the Middle East Department at
the Foreign Office, said that Netanyahu's government had even
failed to honour the previous 'moratorium' on illegal settlement
activity while it was in place .
“According to the Israeli organisation Peace Now, up to 600 new
housing units, as of June this year, had been started while the
moratorium was supposedly in place, in addition to 2,000 units
under construction before the moratorium started,” he said.
In an article for expolix.com Thursday, the former ambassador
referred to commentators arguing that “given the failure of the
United States government to impose a genuine freeze on illegal
settlement activity, it is time for Europe to make a move.”
“I propose to remind the coalition that a previous Conservative
administration imposed a block on British arms sales to Israel
after its invasion of Lebanon in 1982, and to suggest that we
should now consider with our European partners similar action on
an EU-wide basis,” he said.
This, he said, should be pending “an effective moratorium on
illegal settlement activity, and a start to the removal of
settlers from the West Bank and East Jerusalem.”
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