Brussels, 26/01/2004 (Agence Europe) - Reactivating the Middle East Peace Process will be the focus of the next meetings between the EU and the United States, Brian Cowen, President of the Union Council, said on Sunday in Tblissi after talks with Colin Powell, who, like himself, was in the Georgian capital for the investiture of the new president, Mikhaili Saakashvili. Mr Cowen told the press that they had discussed the need for the Quartet to commit itself in the Middle East Peace Process again in order to make visible and concrete, or even modest, progress in coming weeks and months.
Speaking in Davos at the World Economic Forum, US Vice-President Dick Cheney called on democratic friends and allies everywhere in the world and in Europe in particular to join the United States in its effort to support those who, throughout the Middle East, are working in favour of reforms.
Javier Solana commented in Davos, as reported by Reuters, on the idea expressed by the Danish Prime Minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, that the EU and the United States should create a formal structure for the Middle East in a broad sense of the CSCE kind (Conference for Security and Cooperation in Europe - today the OSCE Organisation). He said it is a figment of the imagination to think that there will be something structured from Morocco to Afghanistan.