Israel's new ultranationalist foreign minister said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's right-leaning government would not be bound by U.S.-backed understandings on a Palestinian state reached in 2007.
Avigdor Lieberman's dismissal of the Annapolis conference declaration could swiftly steer Israel and Netanyahu onto a collision course with U.S. President Barack Obama, who last week reaffirmed Washington's commitment to Palestinian statehood.
"It has no validity," Lieberman, an ultranationalist, said in an inaugural speech at the Foreign Ministry. He was referring to a joint declaration issued by Palestinian and the then Israeli leaders in November 2007 at Annapolis, in the U.S. state of Maryland.
At the Annapolis conference, the then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert agreed to further "the goal of two states, Israel and Palestine" in peace negotiations with the Palestinians.
But Lieberman said: "The Israeli government never ratified Annapolis, nor did parliament."
A political source close to Netanyahu said the remarks reflected the position of the new leader, whose right-leaning government was sworn in Tuesday. Lieberman leads the next biggest party in the coalition after Netanyahu's Likud.
Netanyahu has not endorsed statehood for the Palestinians, saying he believed they should govern themselves but have limited powers of authority that would not endanger Israeli security.
"There is no problem here," the political source said. "He (Lieberman) is distancing himself from the Annapolis label, as the government intends to do."
Lieberman said that instead, Israel would follow a course charted by a U.S.-backed peace "road map," a 2003 performance-based plan that made the creation of a Palestinian state contingent on the Palestinians reining in militants.
It also obliged Israel to freeze all settlement activity on occupied Palestinian land.
Nabil Abu Rdainah, a spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said in response to Lieberman's remarks that Washington "should take a clear position against this policy before things get worse."
SURPRISE
Lieberman's statement surprised officials at the Foreign Ministry, where Tzipi Livni formally transferred her post of foreign minister to the immigrant from the former Soviet Union.
"He said Annapolis goes down the drain and we're only committed to the 'road map'. So I guess that's the new path," a senior Israeli official said.
After Lieberman finished, Livni, Israel's lead negotiator in the Annapolis process, leaned over and spoke to him privately.
"In spite of everything that you said, there will be a two-state solution," she told him, according to an Israeli official who was standing nearby and who later spoke to Reuters.
Lieberman heads the far-right Yisrael Beitenu party.
He has been branded a racist by Israeli Arabs over his proposal to enact legislation under which all Israelis would have to swear allegiance to the Jewish state or be denied the right to vote or hold office.
At a ceremony earlier in the day in which Olmert handed over to Netanyahu, President Shimon Peres told the new prime minister that the world backed the Palestinian quest for statehood, a hint that Israel could face international isolation if it did not support that goal.
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