Brussels, 08/03/2010 (Agence Europe) - High Representative Catherine Ashton has announced she is to visit the Middle East next week (from 14 March). This, her first real political tour, will take her to Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Israel, including the Gaza Strip. She said on Saturday 6 March, after the informal meeting of foreign ministers in Cordoba (see related article) where the Israeli-Palestinian peace process was discussed, that she had wanted to travel to Gaza too, in order to form an idea for herself of the situation and the issues to be resolved. On Monday 8 March, her spokesman said that she “intended” to go to Gaza to visit European projects and to “see what is happening with EU money”. This is provided that Israel, which has imposed a blockade on the Gaza Strip since Hamas came to power, allows her to make the journey, added the spokesman, skirting round the issue of whether Ashton planned to meet Hamas officials (while pointing out that the matter of access to Gaza had first and foremost to be resolved, he did not rule out the possibility). In Cordoba on Saturday, member states repeated their willingness to see the EU become a player in the Middle East “to make the two states solution a reality,” as Spanish minister Miguel Ángel Moratinos told press after the meeting. The EU backs current American efforts to get indirect talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority restarted, Moratinos said. (H.B./transl.rt)