President Abbas Affirmed Earlier Today That The OneVoice Platform is Consistent with his Political Program

In a press conference earlier today, October 18, 2007, in Ramallah, where Dr. Saeb Erakat was briefing the media about the Rice visit, he concluded with a clarification that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas asked him to give regarding the OneVoice Movement.

>Below is the transcript of his words in English, which correspond almost verbatim to his words in Arabic [brackets provide differentiation]:

I want to say one another thing, there was supposed to be an event today by an organization called OneVoice and the President asked me in my press conference to clarify the following:

This organization sent invitations under the auspices of the President without consulting him [the Arabic transcript also adds that the organization has apologized for this]

Nevertheless the President would like to say that OneVoice organization is an NGO that has every right to work and that its political program, after Abu Mazen read it, reflects the President's platform and the Palestinian objectives, and Abu Mazen would like to reiterate his full support to those NGOs and Civil society organizations that work for democracy, , culture of peace and ending occupation on the basis of two states solution.

And he said, contrary to what was widely spread, he read the document of OneVoice and this document corresponds with his political program of ending the occupation that began in 1967 by having two states: a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital next to Israeli state at 67 borders and solving the issues reserved to the permanent status negotiations: Jerusalem, borders, refugees and settlements consistent with relevance to the security council international resolutions.