Former Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres is meeting Palestinian officials on a Spanish island tonight to discuss the state of the Middle East peace process after the fall of Israel's coalition government.
Peres and Israeli Parliament speaker Avraham Burg sat immersed in conversation with chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat and former Palestinian Authority national security adviser Mohammed Dahalan on Friday evening on the sidelines of a seminar at a secluded hotel at Formentor on the Mediterranean island of Mallorca. "I know he (Peres) will not be in the government tomorrow...but we need to sit and talk and...see where we go from here," Erekat told reporters.
Peres was among six Labour ministers who resigned from Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's national unity coalition this week in a dispute over funding for Jewish settlements.
"I shall not stop for a moment working for peace. In this conference there are some Arabs and Palestinians. We shall talk with them very seriously and try to see what can be done for the future," Peres told reporters.
He said it was hard to judge whether the fall of the coalition reduced the chances for peace in the Middle East. "A great deal depends also on the energies of the Quartet, the investment of the United States, the priority given to Iraq. Let's not forget that the whole situation is overshadowed by the very serious issue of Iraq," Peres said.
The Quartet - made up of the United States, European Union, United Nations and Russia - has been trying to mediate in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but much of Washington's diplomatic focus has recently been on Iraq which it accuses of developing weapons of mass destruction.