UNITED NATIONS | A U.N. conference on religious tolerance broke new ground Wednesday when a half-dozen Arab leaders - including Saudi King Abdullah for the first time ever - stayed in their seats while an Israeli president spoke.
Perhaps the reason was that they liked what he said.
President Shimon Peres, a Nobel Peace laureate and leading Israeli dove, embraced a 2002 Saudi peace initiative to recognize Israel in exchange for a withdrawal by the Jewish state to pre-1967 borders.
“I must say there is a profound change in their perception,” Mr. Peres told reporters an hour after receiving what might be the loudest applause an Israeli leader has ever experienced inside the chambers of the U.N. General Assembly.
The two-day conference initiated by Saudi King Abdullah was meant to defuse tensions among religions and sects.
Besides the Saudi monarch, those who sat and listened to Mr. Peres included the king of Jordan, the prime ministers of Morocco and Qatar, the president of Lebanon and the emir of Kuwait.
Until Wednesday, Saudi policy was to publicly shun Israeli leaders.
King Abdullah skipped a U.S.-sponsored conference in Annapolis a year ago and sent his foreign minister, Saud al-Faisal, instead.
Prince Saud then sat in the hall outside the main conference room at the U.S. Naval Academy when it was Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s turn to speak.
At the United Nations Wednesday, King Abdullah opened the event:
“We state with a unified voice that religions through which Almighty God sought to bring happiness to mankind should not be turned into instruments to cause misery.”
Mr. Peres spoke after King Abdullah.
“Your majesty, the king of Saudi Arabia, I was listening to your message. I wish that your voice will become the prevailing voice of the whole region, of all people. It’s right, it’s needed, it’s promising,” the Israeli president said.
Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad reminded the audience of his peoples’ demands.
“Nothing that has been said from this rostrum or any other forum might change the historical fact that East Jerusalem is an occupied Palestinian territory since June 5, 1967,” said Mr. Fayyad, demanding that Israel withdraw from that quadrant of the city and from occupied areas of the West Bank.
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