UNITED NATIONS, April 24 (UPI) -- The U.N. special coordinator for Middle East says prospects for a two-state solution in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have diminished.
Alvaro De Soto told the U.N. Security Council Monday there is "a potentially dangerous deterioration of the situation."
He told the 15-member panel both parties were heading on "different trajectories" from when the road map to peace was drawn up in 2003 by the diplomatic Quartet of the European Union, Russia, the United Nations and the United States.
"It is no exaggeration to say that prospects for achieving a two-state solution along the lines envisaged in the road map have receded," De Soto told the ambassadors, underscoring that "the radical departure of the new Palestinian government from tenets long accepted by the Palestinian Liberation Organization on behalf of the Palestinian people, and its failure to meet the principles articulated by the Quartet."
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has invited Quartet principals to U.N. World Headquarters in New York for a ministerial-level meeting May 9.
De Soto also blamed Israel's "settlement expansion and a route of the barrier which deviates from the 1967 borders, raising serious concerns whether it will ever be possible to achieve a viable and contiguous Palestinians state."
He advocated dealing "with the right mixture of firm adherence to basic principles and creativity to meet a rapidly evolving reality."
Ambassador Wang Guangya of China, this month's president of the council, later told reporters: "The situation is complicated but I do hope that what the council should do and what the international community should do is to call on all parties to reengage to the peace process."
