Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what the reasons were for the UK's abstention on a Resolution before the UN to require Israel to withdraw from the territory it has occupied since 1967.

We have long believed that direct negotiations towards a two state-solution need to be on the basis of clear, internationally agreed, parameters. We therefore welcomed the idea of an United Nations Security Council Resolution on the Middle East Peace Process which sets these out. We supported much of the content of the resolution. However, there were important issues which required proper negotiation, including the inclusion of arbitrary deadlines. Regretfully, this did not happen, so we abstained.