Journalists and Middle East experts, including senior officials and lawmakers from Israel and the Palestinian Authority, gathered Monday at the Paris headquarters of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to discuss the search for peace in the troubled region, according to a report on the UN website.
In a message to the two-day seminar, Secretary General Kofi Annan was quoted as saying that during his just-concluded week-long tour of the Middle East he had met not only with senior officials but also with victims of the conflict, including Palestinian children mutilated by gunfire and Israel schoolmates of teenagers killed by a recent bombing in Tel Aviv.
"Their suffering is terrible in itself, but all the worse in that each act of violence sows the seeds of the next, and further erodes each side's belief that peace with the other will ever be possible," he said.
Annan pointed out, however, that the two parties shared a mutual desire to see an end to the bloodshed. "On both sides there is also a deep yearning to escape from this hell and find the way to a normal and peaceful life," he said.
The UN chief raised a theme he has repeated throughout his trip -- the need for both parties to seize the opportunity for peace by adhering to the ceasefire, implementing the recommendations of an international committee of fact-finding (the "Mitchell committee"), and returning to the negotiating table to settle their differences based on UN resolutions.
"The end of the process must be a comprehensive peace settlement, negotiated by the parties on the basis of Security Council resolutions 242 and 338, and the principle of land for peace, and the road that leads back to such negotiations has been clearly traced by the Mitchell Commission," he said.
But Annan failed in an attempt to convene Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres for a meeting which he would attend.
It was Israeli premier Ariel Sharon who turned down the proposal, a decision which triggered a row with between him and Peres.
"The offer came...from the secretary general," Peres told reporters after meeting Annan.
But according to public radio, Sharon categorically refused the offer.
The secretary general's message to the media meeting was delivered by Shashi Tharoor, the interim head of the UN Department of Public Information, which organized the event.
In his address to participants, UNESCO Director General Koichiro Matsuura joined Annan's call for peace and noted that education, combined with objective information, constituted a powerful tool to change attitudes.
Ambassador Ibra Deguène, the chairman of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, said the situation in the field was getting worse and that it was time for the international community to act. He also noted the crucial role of the media in raising awareness in an objective and non-biased way.
Also taking part in the morning's session, which was moderated by Tharoor, were Loic Hennekinne, secretary general of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Nasser Al Kidwa, the permanent observer of Palestine to the UN, Yuli Tamir, a former cabinet minister in former prime minister Barak's government, Ambassador Clovis Maksoud (Lebanon), the director of the American University's Centre for the Global South, and Stephen Cohen, the president of the Institute for Middle East Peace and Development.
Two Palestinian journalists who had been scheduled to attend were unable to do so due to travel restrictions imposed by Israel – Albawaba.com
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