JAPAN FOREIGN MINISTER DISCUSSES JERUSALEM IN JORDAN
Japan's Foreign Minister Taro Kono on Tuesday held talks with his
Jordanian counterpart, who said Jerusalem's fate should be decided in talks
after Washington recognized the city as Israel's capital.
The status of the city should be decided "through direct
negotiations and according to the relevant international resolutions", Ayman
Safadi was reported by the Petra state news agency as saying.
US President Donald Trump's controversial decision to recognise
Jerusalem as Israel's capital has triggered Palestinian protests and was
rejected in a non-binding UN General Assembly resolution.
Only eight countries sided with Washington at the UN, including
Guatemala, which said on Sunday it would follow the US in moving its embassy to
Israel to the holy city.
In Amman on Tuesday, Kono said longstanding US ally Japan would not be
shifting its diplomatic mission to Jerusalem, Petra agency said, agreeing that
the city's status should be decided at negotiations.
Israel seized the eastern part of Jerusalem in the 1967 Six Day War and
later annexed it in a move not recognised by the international community.
Israelis see the whole of the city as their undivided capital, while
the Palestinians view the east as the capital of their future state.
The United Nations has long said the only way to forge peace is to have
two states— Israel and Palestine—with Jerusalem as the capital of both and the
borders returned to their status before the 1967 war.
Israel and Jordan in 1994 signed a peace treaty, which recognizes
Amman's special status as official custodian of Jerusalem's holy Muslim sites.
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