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Brown Tells Knesset UK Will Stand By Israel on Iran

International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, 21 Jul 2008

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown assured Israeli leaders in a speech to the Knesset on Monday that the UK is ready to impose new sanctions against Iran that will further its isolation if Tehran does not halt its nuclear program and stop threatening the Jewish state.

"We say with one voice: It is totally abhorrent for the president of Iran to call for Israel to be wiped from the map of the world," Brow said. "Our country will continue to lead, with the United States and our European partners, in our determination to prevent an Iranian nuclear weapons program.

Britain, Brown declared, "stand[s] ready to lead in taking further sanctions and will ask the whole international community to join us... Iran has a clear choice to make: Suspend its nuclear weapons program and accept our offer of negotiations or face growing isolation and the collective response, not just of one nation, but of all nations around the world."

The prime minister also stated he believed a "hard-won and lasting peace" between Israel and the Palestinians "is within your grasp," and declared his support for a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders, with Jerusalem as a "capital for both."

Sounding a personal note, Brown mentioned that his father was a minister who had visited Israel numerous times and "had a deep and lifelong affection for Israel."

During a press conference on Sunday with Brown, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said that the finalization of a Palestinian-Israeli peace deal can be reached by the end of 2008. Borwn echoed those, but criticized Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, insisting it "has made peace harder to achieve. It erodes trust, it heightens Palestinian suffering, it makes the compromises Israel needs to make for peace more difficult."

Brown's visit to Israel and address to the Knesset this week follows on the heels US President George W. Bush, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who have also visited Jerusalem and delivered major speeches in parliament over recent months in honor of Israel's 60th Anniversary celebrations.