Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Sunday that he will meet US Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo later this week at a US-sponsored ministerial summit in Warsaw, Poland, to “promote a future of peace and security in the Middle East.”
The prime minister said he will meet additional leaders as well, though he did not give any names. Representatives from nearly 80 countries, including from Arab states, have been invited to attend.
“The first issue on the agenda is Iran – how to continue preventing it from entrenching in Syria, how to thwart its aggression in the region and, above all, how to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons," Netanyahu said.
In addition to meeting Pence later this week, Netanyahu is expected to meet US President Donald Trump at the end of March, when he travels to Washington to attend the annual AIPAC policy conference.
The Palestinian Authority turned down an invitation to attend the Warsaw conference, and called on other Arab countries to do the same.
Trump's senior adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner, as well as Jason Greenblatt, the president's special representative for international negotiations, are scheduled to attend. The two are expected to roll out Trump's long-awaited Mideast peace blueprint sometime after the April 9 Israeli elections, and reportedly will update participants on the plan at the meeting.
The pan-Arab, London-based newspaper Al Sharq Al-Awsat reported last week that six committees are expected to be set up at the Warsaw summit, taxed with “changing Iran's behavior in the region,” and dealing with issues such as terrorism, extremism, ballistic missile development, the safety and security of naval passages and human rights issues.
This article has been adapted from its original source.
