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Middle East peace process initiatives - Daily press briefing by the Office of the Spokesman for the Secretary-General

The following is a near-verbatim transcript of today's noon briefing by Stéphane Dujarric, Spokesman for the Secretary-General.
Good afternoon.

**Secretary-General's Travels

A number of you have been asking us about potential travel by the Secretary-General, so I wanted to let you know that he will, at the end of this week, begin a series of travels intended to strengthen the situation in Lebanon and Israel, following the cessation of hostilities and the passage of Security Council resolution 1701. On Friday, the Secretary-General will be in Brussels to participate in the meeting of European Union foreign ministers, to encourage contributions of troops to the expanded United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL). From there, he will make stops in Lebanon and Israel to meet with senior officials in those two countries and encourage them to implement, fully, resolution 1701.

The Secretary-General will also meet with officials of the Palestinian Authority. He will also travel to Qatar, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and, also likely, Syria and Iran. The sequence of those stops following Lebanon and Israel is still being worked out, as are the exact dates of those stops. He will stop in those countries, but the order of those stops has not yet been fully decided.

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**Question and Answers

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Question: The Secretary-General is now taking a trip to the Middle East. In view of the fact that the so called Middle East peace process is virtually dead, will he now be using this opportunity to organize, or to jump-start, or to make some other effort, to have the Middle East peace process restarted? Especially asking all the other nations to come on board? Has he any new ideas? Does he also have any plans to do that when he goes to meet all the Heads of State and Government?

Spokesman: Of course, as the Secretary-General said in his statements and as the resolution states, we very much hope the full implementation of 1701 will be a catalyst to address the larger issues in the Middle East peace process. Those issues will likely come up in his discussions. The focus of the Secretary-General's trip will be the implementation of 1701.

Question: My question is, does he have a plan? Because at the root of it all, there has been the Middle East peace process breaking down and the Palestinian question. That's how it started. So, does he have a plan at all at this point in time?

Spokesman: It is clear that one of the lessons learned from the past six weeks is that these problems need to be addressed politically. As I said, this will be part of his conversations with the leaders in the region.

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Question: Two questions. As a follow-up to Masood's question, the Arab League has asked for a meeting of foreign ministers to discuss a new initiative on the Mideast peace process during the General Assembly. Is this an initiative the Secretary-General supports, and is it something that he will be discussing during this trip? And then I have a Congo question.

Spokesman: This is an initiative that is obviously being done by the Arab League. We're in talks with them, in discussion with them on this issue. We're studying their ideas at this point. As I said to Masood, the purpose of the trip is the full implementation of resolution 1701, but, of course, the issue of the greater Middle East peace process will clearly come up during those discussions.

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For information media - not an official record