No change on Vatican's Jerusalem stand

A joint Palestinian - Vatican committee is due to be formed in the coming few weeks to reach an agreement on the legal status of Catholic Churches and institutions in Palestinian-controlled areas.

PLO General Commissioner in Britain Afif Safiyeh said an agreement to this effect was reached recently with the Vatican and that the committee should prepare a document defining the rights and privileges of Palestinian Catholic institutions. Parallel committees will also be formed with representatives of other churches and communities in the Palestinian areas to regulate all questions of rights and privileges for those Christian communities, he said.

Safiyeh said he received a detailed explanation from the Vatican Foreign Ministry reiterating the Vatican's solid stand in rejection of recognizing Israel's self-declared sovereignty over Arab Jerusalem, and that the Vatican-Israel agreement on Christian properties does not mean recognizing Israeli custody of those properties in Jerusalem.

The agreement between the Vatican and Israel, signed a few months ago, regulated relations between Catholic institutions and the Israeli government and the Vatican has since then been denying that the agreement had any political implications, especially on the status of Arab East Jerusalem, whose status is yet to be decided in the final status negotiations between the Palestine National Authority and Israel.