10/05/2002 (Agence Europe) - Both the High Representative for CFSP, Javier Solana and the European Commissioner for External relations, Chris Patten, said they were saddened by the increasingly frequent accusations of anti-Semitism launched against Europe by the United States (President Bush is said to have raised the problem in private conversations with European officials). Thus, at a conference in Madrid, Javier Solana regretted the "feeling that has built up in the United States, that Europe has more or less turned into a group of anti-Semitic countries", whereas it continues to be "animated on a fundamental level by solid and serious political parties that defend democratic values such a tolerance, and the great fundamental values on which Europe was built and on which it continues to be built". As for Chris Patten, he said he had been shocked to read a commentary by George F. Will in the Washington Post, by which Europe is said to be playing its part in the "second - and final? - phase of the struggle for a final solution to the Jewish question". It seems that there are similar mutterings on Capitol Hill, remarked Patten, recalling that there has also been "attacks on the symbols and followers of Islam". "I regret the visceral contempt for Europe" that "I sense in a country that I love and admire", he said. And, citing the American Senator who recently said, "all of us here are member of the Likud", Patten replied: "So any criticism of the policies and philosophy of Likud condemns one as an anti-Semite?".