Days of Palestine, Paris –France would recognise Palestine State when doing so would help promoting peace, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said on Tuesday.
Fabius stressed that French recognition of the Palestine State would not be purely “symbolic.”
Addressing the French parliament, Fabius said: “From the moment that we say there must be two-states, there will be a need for recognition of the Palestinian state, that goes without saying.”
He continued: “The only question is what are the procedures and how to be most effective. What we want is not a symbolic issue but to be helpful to peace.”
French remarks about recognising Palestine as a state came just one day after a historic vote took place in the British parliament overwhelmingly backing the recognition of a Palestinian state. The measure is unbinding and largely symbolic.
Last week, the Swedish prime minister said his government is also keen to recognise Palestine as a state, which would make his country the first EU member to take such a measure.
At the beginning of this month, the Palestinian Authority distributed a proposal to the 15 members of the UN Security Council to put a timetable for the end of the Israeli occupation beyond the 1967 borders by 2016, followed by the establishment of a Palestinian state.
The UN General Assembly upgraded the representation of the Palestinian Authority to a non-member observer state on November 29, 2012. The vote was 138 in favour and nine opposed, with 41 abstentions, including the UK.
Shortlink for this post: https://daysofpalestine.ps/?p=1790
