 British Prime Minister Tony Blair underlined yesterday his support for the Palestinian Government formed by the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, and said: "I support the elections mandate of Hamas."
| "Go ahead and elect anybody you want. It's your country, or protocountry anyway. You're free to screw it up as you please. But..." |
But he reminded the latter of the importance of reviving the peace process in the Middle East and renouncing violence.
| "If you can't behave like civilized people you're going to have to live with the consequences, aren't you?" |
He announced that "peace in the Middle East is an absolute priority for me and the international community" and that the present situation "is causing loss of confidence in the world."
| "Since you're not acting like civilized people at the moment, nobody's going to go out on a limb for you except for the princes and the black turbans. And they're not the most reliable of friends." |
Speaking at his monthly press conference, Blair set out two fundamental principles for reaching a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict by saying: "There is only one way for making progress and that is by having everybody accepting the fundamental principles for reaching peace and these are to support an independent viable Palestinian state with proper and known borders so that the state is indeed viable and by having everybody recognizing the State of Israel and the need to look after its security."
| "You can't have one without the other." |
He added: "If everyone accepts these two principles, then I and US President George Bush have every desire to take this process forward in order to make progress. But this should be on the basis of these two principles."
| "Otherwise, have a nice day." |
Blair went on to say, "We should be clear that the reason why the Palestinian elections were held as scheduled was because the international community insisted on holding them. I support entirely the mandate of Hamas. They won the elections fair and square and they are the new elected government."
| "They're not the elected revolutionaries. They're not the elected general staff. They're not the elected mob." |
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