Palestinian President meets EU’s Ashton

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas met Thursday with European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton at his Ramallah headquarter where he briefed her on Palestinian efforts to win non-member state at the United Nations. Abbas told Ashton that the UN effort aims to preserve the two-state solution, which is starting to disappear with Israel’s rejection of international resolutions and its persistence with settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territories, particularly in occupied Jerusalem. He said he was ready to resume negotiations with Israel after upgrading Palestine’s status at the UN and that the negotiations will be over final status issues. Ashton told Abbas that the EU’s 2009 and 2010 declarations on the Middle East peace process represent EU policy toward the Middle East, which stresses the two-state solution as a base for resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.