Engagements

Part of Oral Answers to Questions — Prime Minister – in the House of Commons at 2:30 pm on 24 October 2001.

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Photo of Tony Blair Tony Blair Prime Minister 2:30, 24 October 2001

My hon. Friend is right to say that some outside help might be needed to get the peace process in the middle east restarted, but nothing can happen unless the key parties themselves want to take that process forward. I urge them strongly to do so. For all the difficulties, all the bloodshed, the daily funerals, the reprisals and the retaliation, people know that at some point Israelis and Palestinians will have to come back to the negotiating table and work out how to live side by side in peace. Whatever difficulties we have met during the peace process in Northern Ireland, at least it offers some sign that if people persevere, whatever the problems they face, it is better than leaving a vacuum into which extremism inevitably moves.