“This should be communicated through the Security Council. If this happens, we are in the business,” he added, referring to expectations regarding a two-state solution, with Israel and Palestine side by side.
Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos reiterated Moussa’s statements and said Israeli settlement in the Palestinian territories should come to a halt.
“We need to give a strong message to Israel by EU,” Moratinos said.
Along the same lines, Luxembourgian Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn stated: “We cannot accept in the EU that Israel will leave the two-state position. We can’t tolerate that.”
He also said Syria was an important player in the region and that it should be engaged. He said the time was right for Syria and the EU to make an association agreement that would show Syria that it has friends in the EU and that the EU is well aware of Syria’s important position in the Middle East. State Minister Egemen Bağış, Turkey’s chief negotiator for EU talks, said Turkey also supported a two-state solution and was committed to being part of the peace process. “We have a saying: If your neighbor’s house is on fire, you need to put it out,” he added.
 UNAOC’s Sampaio announces initiatives at İstanbul forum Former Portuguese President Jorge Sampaio, the high representative of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC), has announced a number of initiatives undertaken at the second Forum of the UNAOC, which ended yesterday. He said several countries, including Albania, Algeria, Argentina, Montenegro, Portugal, the Russian Federation, Qatar and Slovenia, presented their national plans and regional strategies for intercultural dialogue. Turkey and Spain had presented their national plans previous to the forum. “Regional strategies for the Eastern European countries, the Euro-Mediterranean region and the Ibero-American countries have also been announced with regards to the Eastern European Strategy, an international conference in Sarajevo to take place in the second half of this year,” Sampaio said in a press briefing, held jointly with Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan and Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel ÁAngel Moratinos. He added that the Euro-Mediterranean regional strategy will be carried out in a meeting to be hosted by Egypt. Next year’s UNAOC meeting will be in Brazil. İstanbul Today’s Zaman |
Asselborn recalled that Turkey’s peacemaking efforts were interrupted by Israel’s 22-day offensive in Gaza, which started at the end of last year and left over 1,300 Palestinians dead.
Prior to Israel’s Dec. 27 attack on Gaza, Turkey was deeply involved in mediating between Israel and Syria and was awaiting a response from then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert when bombs began to fall on Palestinian territory. Israel’s attack on Gaza was interpreted by Turkish officials as “going behind Turkey’s back.” Bağış said at the UNAOC Forum that the Gaza offensive damaged the mediation process, which Turkey had worked on for over a year. “Before the Gaza tragedy, our prime minister [Recep Tayyip Erdoğan] went to Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt to form a united front. This was four days prior to Gaza. I was there with him. Our prime minister was on the phone with [Syrian president] Bashar Assad and Olmert.”
Bağış: We don’t have preconditions
Asked by the other panelists what it would take for Turkey to re-engage in similar peace-making efforts, Bağış said: “We don’t have preconditions. As long as there is will on both sides, as long as Syria and Israel are there, we will be there.”
After an official from the Israeli Foreign Ministry took the floor, an even livelier discussion began. The Israeli official said the panel was one-sided as it did not include a single panelist arguing from the Israeli side. He also said the settlement issue was not the core issue that Israelis and Palestinians needed to solve and that Israel had dismantled settlements before and could do so again. But when Israel did so in the past, he said, the only response it received was terrorism.
Moussa: What do you expect? We kiss you?
In response, Moussa took the floor. “You are occupying territories of Palestinians. You are embargoing them. You are starving them. What do you expect? We kiss you?” he asked.
Asselborn said the EU had repeated many times that Israel must stop its settlements but the bloc never received a response to its demands. “Maybe we can negotiate with the Netanyahu government,” he added.
Moratinos, on the other hand, said the world must see that embargoes do not work and that it is important to maintain dialogue and engagement. “I worked with [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu in the past. He is a hard-liner but pragmatic. We should engage the Israeli government and see their response,” he said.
A Jerusalem Post article published yesterday reported that Asselborn had urged the EU at a meeting of foreign ministers last month to retract an invitation to Israel to participate in various EU meetings and said, “Further diplomatic preferential treatment cannot happen without conditions,” demanding that the Netanyahu government “prove through its actions that it will accept a Palestinian state.”
Sampaio: We can help politicians
Taking the floor last, the high representative of the UNAOC Forum, former Portuguese President Jorge Sampaio, said UNAOC did not have the capacity to solve problems but could help politicians do so. “The alliance is a place to discuss issues. Please don’t ask the alliance to solve the problems. But we can help politicians to solve the problems,” he said in closing.
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