Iraq confirms support for Palestinian state

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Iraqi Foreign Ministry on Thursday reiterated Iraq's support for the establishment of a Palestinian state with al-Quds (Jerusalem) as its capital.

The Iraqi ministry "confirms Iraq's historic and fundamental stance on the Palestinian cause and supporting the rights of the Palestinian people to liberate their land and their people and to establish an independent state with al-Quds as its capital," the media office of the ministry said in a statement.

The ministry also said that "Iraq supports Arab and international peace initiatives, including the Arab Peace Initiative, which was presented at the Beirut summit in 2002 and has become a permanent item on the agenda of subsequent Arab summits," it added.

The Arab Peace Initiative, also known as the Saudi Initiative, included a proposal for an end to the Arab-Israeli conflict that was endorsed by the Arab League in 2002 at the Beirut summit and re-endorsed at the 2007 and 2017 Arab League summits.

The initiative calls for normalizing relations between the Arab region and Israel, in exchange for a full withdrawal by Israel from the occupied territories (including East Jerusalem) and a "just settlement" of the Palestinian refugee problem based on UN Resolution 194.

The ministry's statement came in response to local media reports that quoted Wednesday the Iraqi Foreign Minister Mohammed Ali al-Hakim as saying that "Iraq believes in a two-state solution to end the Palestinian crisis with Israel."

Al-Hakim's comment received negative reactions from some members of the Iraqi parliament, who demanded not to take such sensitive stances without consulting the cabinet and the parliament.

Source(s): Xinhua News Agency