MSNBC News Services
July 19, 2001

ROME, July 19 - U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell joined the foreign ministers from the Group of Eight nations in backing the deployment of neutral monitors to help calm tensions between Israel and the Palestinians.

IN A final communique issued at the end of a two-day meeting, the ministers said the monitors must be acceptable to both sides. Their presence, the ministers said, could help implement recommendations of an international commission of inquiry which they said were the only way to end the nine months of violence and restart the peace process.

"We believe that in these circumstances, third-party monitoring accepted by both parties would serve their interests in implementing the Mitchell Report," the communique said.

Israel has opposed Palestinian calls to send monitors to the region, and the United States has generally backed the Israeli position, saying international monitors cannot be imposed on Israel. The communique made clear any monitoring force must be approved by Israel.

An adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Raanan Gissin, rejected an international force.

"Observers or monitors are not acceptable to us for the simple reason that when there are observers deployed here, there has to be observance of the cease-fire, and unfortunately and regrettably I must say that the Palestinian Authority has not observed the cease-fire," Gissin told The Associated Press.

The Mitchell report, drawn up by an international commission headed by former U.S. Senate leader George Mitchell, called for an end to violence in the region, a crackdown on militants by the Palestinian Authority and a freeze on building in Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Secretary of State Powell told a press conference that the Mitchell recommendations were the only way forward.

"So we don't need a new way to get to negotiations. This gives us a clear way to get to negotiations," Powell said. "To start down that trail, we must have an end to the violence."

The G8 foreign ministers met in Rome to set the agenda for the G8 summit in Genoa, which starts Friday.