RIYADH, Saudi Arabia, March 29 (UPI) -- The chief of the 22-member Arab League dismissed as unimportant Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres' rejection of the Arab peace plan.
The league's secretary-general, Amr Mousa, told reporters Thursday in Riyadh that the Israeli official "can say whatever he wants; we are not concerned with the Israeli position."
Mousa's comments came ahead of the closing session of the two-day Arab summit that revived a 2002 Saudi-sponsored peace initiative that offered Israel normal relations in return for its pullout from the territories it occupied in the 1967 war and the establishment of a Palestinian state there.
Peres said earlier it was unacceptable for the Arabs to say, "You must take what we offer you as is," in reference to Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal's remarks that if Israel refuses the initiative, "it means it doesn't want peace and it places everything back in the hands of fate."
At the summit, the Arabs have refused to meet Israeli demands to amend the 5-year-old initiative, which demanded Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state and the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes they were forced to flee in 1948.
Mousa said the Arabs will not deal with Israel "unless they move and change their policy towards peace, and we categorically reject their amendments."
