US Vice President Dick Cheney said Sunday that the establishment of a Palestinian state was “long overdue.” He was speaking at a West Bank press event with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. “As President (George W) Bush has said, the establishment of a state of Palestine is long overdue and the Palestinian people deserve it,” Cheney said on the latest stop in a nine-day tour of the region. Cheney arrived in Ramallah Sunday after meetings with senior Israeli officials aimed at encouraging peace talks revived at a US conference in November that have made little progress since then. He said achieving Israeli-Palestinian peace would require painful concessions from both sides. Abbas said Israeli settlement expansion, military checkpoints and raids were blocking progress towards peace. “Security and peace will not be realized with the continuation of the settlement activities and the establishment of roadblocks around cities and villages,” he said. But Cheney warned that Palestinian strikes on Israel, including rocket attacks, “kill the legitimate hopes and aspirations” for a Palestinian state. “Terror and rockets do not merely kill innocent civilians, they also kill the legitimate hopes and aspirations of the Palestinian people,” he said. __
