15:23, 12 May 2009 | GMT +5
US pushing new plan for Mideast
LONDON/DAMASCUS. May 12. KAZINFORM. The United States is promoting a peace plan for the Middle East involving a ?57-state solution? in which the entire Muslim world would recognize Israel, yesterday?s Times of London quoted Jordan?s King Abdallah as saying; Kazinform refers to Arab News.

?We are offering a third of the world to meet them with open arms,? the king said. ?The future is not the Jordan River or the Golan Heights or the Sinai, the future is Morocco in the Atlantic and Indonesia in the Pacific. That is the prize.?
But he warned: ?If we delay our peace negotiations, then there is going to be another conflict between Arabs or Muslims and Israel in the next 12-18 months.?
The newspaper said the king had hatched the plan with President Barack Obama in Washington in April. Details are likely to be thrashed out in a series of diplomatic moves this month, including Obama?s meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington next week.
The Times said that, after Obama?s meeting with Netanyahu in Washington on May 18, the peace initiative could form the centerpiece of his major address to the Muslim world in Egypt on June 4.
The Obama administration backs the establishment of a Palestinian state as part of the solution to the Middle East conflict. Netanyahu has yet to endorse the idea.
Netanyahu has been vague in public about the scope of any future peace talks. His main right-wing and ultra-Orthodox coalition partners oppose negotiations on the so-called core issues ? the borders of a Palestinian state as well as the fate of Jerusalem and Palestinian refugees.
Jordan had said the Abdallah-Assad meeting in the Syrian capital would focus on a 2002 Arab peace offer to Israel; Kazinform cites Arab News. See www.arabnews.com for full version.