"You won't get any 'Israbluff' with me. Israel undertook obligations regarding the road map and it will honor them, but there must be reciprocity," Avigdor Lieberman said in an interview with Haaretz just hours after being sworn in as foreign minister. He criticized the previous government for failing to meet its commitments. "How many outposts did Olmert, Barak and Livni evacuate? How many roadblocks did they remove?"
At the handover ceremony at the Foreign Ministry Thursday afternoon, Lieberman sounded an aggressive foreign policy stance, emphasizing that the new government is not bound by the Annapolis process, under which former prime minister Ehud Olmert and former foreign minister Tzipi Livni conducted negotiations with the Palestinian Authority on the core issues of a final-status arrangement.
"Whoever thinks that he will achieve something by way of concessions - no, he will only invite more pressure and more wars," Lieberman said. "If you want peace, prepare for war. The ceremony was attended by dozens of diplomats, many of whom registered discernible shock at the messages of the new minister that they will soon have to sell abroad. Livni violated protocol by speaking up and contradicting her successor, saying that actually Israel was indeed committed to the Annapolis process. After Lieberman ended his remarks, Livni told him: "You've convinced me that I was right not to join the government."
A spokesman for the U.S. National Security Council commented Thursday on Lieberman's remarks. "The president has said many times that we are committed to the establishment of a democratic Palestinian state living side by side with Israel in peace and security," Mike Hammer said.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1075937.html
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