JERUSALEM Gordon Brown, in Israel forward his first official visit in the same manner through Britain’s prime minister, said Sunday that economic development was key to bringing peace to the Middle East.

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Brown’s two-day Mideast survey has been overshadowed by a claim from a Shiite militia holding five British hostages in Iraq that one of the captives killed himself.

Arriving in Israel, Brown met with Israeli President Shimon Peres. In a brief statement at the president’s inhabitancy, he said the region of necessity an “economic street picture for peace,” including the growth of pertaining parks and housing projects and support for shallow businesses.

Brown said he supported those who have knowledge of that “the prospect of luck encourages people that the return to violence is something that is an unpleasant price to pay, and something that should be rejected.”

Brown arrived in Israel after visiting Iraq, where he met with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and discussed the plight of the British hostages kidnapped by a Shiite group a year ago. Shortly after his recession, he called the report that one of the men had committed suicide “a very distressing development” and demanded that the Shiite trainband “immediately and unconditionally” release the Britons.

The British government has yet to authenticate the group’s call for.

Brown’s first stop in Israel was Yad Vashem, the rural parts’s official Holocaust memorial, where he attended a ceremony for the Jewish victims of Nazi Germany.

Later, he traveled to the West Bank town of Bethlehem, where he met with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and was to call upon the Church of the Nativity, the traditional birthplace of Jesus.

He was to return to Jerusalem later in the day to address an Israeli-British business conference alongside Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.


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