Quartet Representative discusses Middle East with Australian PM – Post-meeting joint conference – OQR press release/Non-UN document

Quartet Representative Tony Blair discusses Middle East with Australian PM Julia Gillard

Speaking at a joint press conference after their meeting, Mr Blair said the priority the Quartet was working on was "to try and see if we can establish some principles of guidance to renew the negotiation. We know what the issues are: borders, security, Jerusalem, refugees are the key issues.

"President Obama has set out in a speech a couple of months ago the basic analysis for this. If we could get agreed a set of principles that would then allow a negotiation to be credible, then I think that would enable us to manage any actions that are taken at the UN a lot more easily."

Asked about the potential vote at the United Nations in September, Mr Blair said that "the problem is that, as indeed the President of the Palestinian Authority has recognised, the problem is that anything you do unilaterally is not going, effectively, to deliver what the Palestinians want, and what we want to see, which is an independent and a sovereign Palestinian state."

Asked about the prospects of an imminent breakthrough, Mr Blair acknowledged that the current situation was "very challenging" but he stressed that he was determined to "carry on working on it, and by the way every time you look at this issue to do with the Israelis and Palestinians, you realise, one, it is of fundamental importance to the whole stability of the region, and two, there is only one solution, which is the two states.

"So, whatever, however many different iterations we go through in crises and challenges, you always come back to that basic point, and somehow we’ve got to restore the credibility of that negotiating process and that’s what we’re going to spend time working on, but the only way you will get a Palestinian state is through negotiation, ultimately."