Pretoria | Wednesday
SOUTH African President Thabo Mbeki is to host a meeting of pro-peace Palestinian officials and Israelis in support of existing Middle East peace initiatives, starting on Wednesday, Deputy Foreign Minister Aziz Pahad has announced.
He added however that the Israelis at the talks would not be representing their government, and that the venue was being kept secret for security reasons.
“We want to see how our experiences can help them … how we can help break the cycle of violence,” Pahad told journalists in Cape Town, with a live link to Pretoria.
Avraham Burg, speaker of the Israeli parliament and a liberal member of the Labour Party, will lead the eight-person Israeli delegation to the talks, which are being billed as a “presidential retreat”, from January 9 to 11.
He will be joined by Yossi Beilin — a former Israeli cabinet minister and an architect of the 1993 Oslo peace accords.
A senior minister in the Palestinian authority and one of its chief negotiators, Saeb Erekat, will lead the eight-person Palestinian delegation.
Pahad said Mbeki would host the meeting, aimed at supporting ongoing peace initiatives, creating a favourable environment to restart the peace process and sharing South Africa’s experiences.
He said Beilin raised the idea during a meeting with Mbeki in August and the retreat followed consultations with other players in the peace process.
Negotiators of the former Labour government and Palestinian Authority officials, most familiar with negotiations, will explore how South Africa’s experiences could help them break out of the cycle of violence at the retreat, Pahad said.
“The retreat is a supportive initiative bringing the participants together in an informal environment conducive to sharing experiences and exploring creatively how to move the Middle East peace process forward,” Pahad said.
He said it would focus on providing insight into South Africa’s negotiations process during the early 1990s, which led up to a peaceful transition to democracy.
“Without us thinking we can impose (South Africa’s negotiations process) on others, it is applicable to many other conflict situations.”
The former foreign and deputy law and order ministers of the apartheid government, who played a key role in its talks with the then-enemy the African National Congress (ANC), are expected to attend the retreat.
A host of current cabinet ministers from the ANC will also be present. – AFP