PETRA, Jordan, (AFP) - Jordan's King Abdullah II warned on Wednesday that failure to create an independent Palestinian state this year would be a "serious mistake," calling for a stable Middle East. "It would be a serious mistake to miss the opportunities we have this year to establish, finally, a sovereign, independent and viable Palestinian state along with a secure and recognised Israel," the king said at the opening of a conference of 29 Nobel laureates whose main focus is the global food crisis and other development issues. "The Middle East must move out of this threat zone. The single most important step is peace - a comprehensive settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict." Israeli President Shimon Peres joined the two-day meeting at Jordan's World Heritage Site of Petra, alongside Arab League chief Amr Mussa, Tibet's spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, and Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade. "Throughout Jordan, and across the region, millions of people want to be part of a stable, moderate, modern Middle East. Long after today's conflicts are history, their lives will be shaped by what we did, this year," the King said. In an interview published on Wednesday by Lebanon's As-Safir newspaper, King Abdullah said that the Palestinians would "not accept any substitute for their homeland". "Israel must realise this fact and acknowledge the existence of the Palestinians and accept the inevitable coexistence with them," he said in the interview, also carried by Jordanian newspapers. His statements came amid fears in Jordan that the kingdom may come under pressure to merge with a rump West Bank if the Palestinians do not win their promised independence. "Jordan is Jordan and Palestine is Palestine," the king stressed in the interview. At the conference, named "Petra IV: Reaching for New Economic, Scientific and Educational Horizons," five working groups were to discuss issues including the world food crisis and youth and economic development in the Middle East. Warning that "extremism feeds on violence and frustration," the King urged Nobel laureates to support young people, who constitute almost 60 per cent of the population of the region. "Their generation is facing immediate challenges. We need to support them in every way possible," he said. The King later met separately with Mussa and Peres, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for Israel's autonomy accord with the Palestinians in 1994, the year when Jordan and Israel signed a peace treaty. "Israel's settlement policies threaten the Middle East peace process. Israel must take all necessary measures to improve Palestinian living conditions and ease Palestinian hardships," the palace quoted the King as telling Peres. The conference is organised by the King Abdullah II Fund for Development and the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity, created by Jewish author and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel who won the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize.