Arab League Secretary-General Nabil Elaraby said the US played a role in toning down a final joint communique during the recently held French peace summit. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

JNS.org – Arab League Secretary-General Nabil Elaraby said that the American delegation led by Secretary of State John Kerry played a role in toning down a final joint communique during the recently held French peace summit on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“It changed things and softened its tone,” Elaraby told the London-based Arabic-daily newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat, explaining that the communique “could have been more firm, but the Americans objected,” and that Kerry “was not keen on the idea.”

According to Elaraby, Kerry opposed a stronger tone in the final communique regarding time limits of any future peace talks and United Nations resolutions serving as a basis for negotiations.

The summit was supposed to conclude with a strong communique on the future direction of a two-state solution and peace negotiations, but ultimately produced a fairly generic statement on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Neither Israeli nor Palestinian leaders were invited to the summit in Paris. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has objected to the French initiative and instead has called for direct negotiations with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.