ANKARA - Turkish President Abdullah Gul on Tuesday strongly denounced Israel's plan to build new settlements in annexed east Jerusalem and urged the Jewish state to retract the decision.
"Israel's intention to build new settlements in east Jerusalem has shocked the whole world... The Israeli leadership must correct this," Gul told reporters after talks with visiting King Abdullah II of Jordan.
Gul said Israel's plan was "clearly in violation" of decisions made at the Middle East peace conference in Annapolis last month, at which Israel and the Palestinians agreed to try to negotiate a peace deal before the end of 2008.
Both parties also pledged to implement the 2003 roadmap plan, the first phase of which calls on Israel to freeze all settlement activity.
Gul, whose country is Israel's main regional ally but has also close ties with the Palestinians, said the Annapolis meeting opened a "great opportunity for peace" and warned that "if it fails once again, our experience shows that the consequences will be worse" than before.
Israel said last week it had invited bids to build more than 300 new housing units at Har Homa in annexed east Jerusalem, the first settlement expansion since the revival of peace talks with the Palestinians.
King Abdullah II also criticised the plan, saying the peace talks "should be accompanied by the implementation of the parties' obligations on the ground, including an end to Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank and east Jerusalem."
The two leaders issued a joint statement stressing that negotiations should aim at "the establishment of an independent and sustainable Palestinian state in 2008."
A comprehensive settlement would depend also on "advancing the peace process in the Lebanese-Israeli and the Syrian-Israeli tracks," the statement said.
King Abdullah II said "timelines and expectations need to be strongly enforced not only by the United States but also the international community."
Gul and the king discussed also the turmoil in their common neighbour Iraq and stressed in their joint statement the need to preserve the conflict-torn country's territorial integrity.
The Jordanian monarch, who also met with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was to travel on to France for talks later Tuesday with French President Nicolas Sarkozy and address the European Parliament on Wednesday.
su/ar
12/11/2007 15:25 GMT