China urges substantial progress in Palestinian-Israeli peace talks

China on Monday urged Palestine and Israel to adopt concrete measures, start peace negotiations at an early date and make substantial progress. China's Permanent Representative to the UN Li Baodong made the statement while addressing an open Security Council meeting on the situation in the Middle East. China is deeply worried about the long-standing stalemate in the Palestinian-Israeli peace talks and also concerned about the economic and humanitarian difficulties faced by the Palestinian people, Li said. "China urges Palestine and Israel to adopt practical measures, remove obstacles to the peace talks in order to seek an early restart of the talks and achieve substantial progress," he said. "Israel should assume the responsibility of taking the first step," said the Chinese ambassador. "We urge Israel to immediately halt the building of the settlement, lift the blockade on Gaza, release detained Palestinians and improve their medical and living conditions and actively coordinate the international community in peace making efforts so as to create conditions for re-launching peace talks with Palestine." The international community should increase its sense of responsibility and urgency for advancing the Middle East peace process and work actively to bring the two sides back to the negotiating table for building mutual trust, Li noted. "China hopes the Quartet on the Middle East will play a positive role and come up as soon as possible with a concrete proposal for resuming the peace talks between Palestine and Israel, " he said. As for the situation in Syria, Li said that China is opposed to any solution to the Syrian crisis imposed by the outside forces or pushing for a so-called "regime change." "The political settlement is the only viable way out for defusing the crisis in Syria," he said. "The priority is to stop as quickly as possible the terrorist and violent activities in all forms, stop all practices that encourage and connive resort to military means and to start a political transition led by the Syrian people." China calls upon all parties in Syria and the international community to coordinate and support the UN-Arab League Joint Special Envoy to Syria Lakhdar Brahimi in his mediation efforts for seeking a political solution to the Syrian crisis, Li added.