Brussels, 23/07/2001 (Agence Europe) - EU High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy Javier Solana is currently making a visit to the Middle East. The visit, which began on Monday in Damascus, where he was to meet the Syrian President and various political leaders, will continue until Thursday stopping in: Lebanon; Israel, where he is to meet President Sharon, Foreign Minister Perez and possibly Defence Minister and President of the Knesset; Ramallah, where he will meet President Arafat; Jordan with a royal audience and a meeting with the Foreign Minister; and then Egypt to end the trip. A meeting with President Mubarak has still to be confirmed for timetable reasons.
Mr Solana, who remains in close contact with US Secretary of State Colin Powell and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, hopes to take advantage of this visit to reaffirm that the implementation of the Mitchell recommendations is the only way to resume the peace process. He plans to urge for consolidation of the ceasefire and the launching, this week, of the second phase in the Mitchell/Tenet plan, known as the "cooling off" period, in the aim of re-establishing direct contacts between both parties. Confirmed in the position adopted by the G8, where the Europeans managed finally to convince the United States, Mr Solana will insist on the need to deploy international observers, a subject on which the Israelis today seem willing to "move a little", according to a European source. Mr Solana is expected to seek to gain their endorsement of an effective selective presence, that is, deployment that gives preference to quality rather than to the number of observers. The many stages in this trip stress the global nature of the peace process even if some talks will also tackle bilateral cooperation between the EU and the countries concerned.