Brussels, 03/07/2007 (Agence Europe) - At the opening of a hearing on the situation in the Middle East, held by the Socialist Group in the European Parliament on Monday, EU High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy Javier Solana re-affirmed the EU's desire to remain vigilant in the face of a steadily deteriorating situation. Responsibility for the situation, he said, had to lie with the lack of progress in the peace process and with a concerted approach in which Iran was involved. He did not, however, directly implicate Iran, a country with which contact is still to be maintained in an effort to break the crisis over its nuclear programme. He noted the similarity between various events in the region, in Gaza and Lebanon, in particular in the Palestinian Nahr el Bared camp. This similarity led him to see the hands of Tehran and Damascus in the current tension. “New groups” had appeared in the Palestinian camps and, he said, their actions seemed to conform to the same demands as those of the “regional players”. He felt that “what happened in Gaza cannot be separated from what happened in Lebanon,” when the UNIFIL was “attacked for the first time”. In his opinion, “it would be naïve not to see this as part of a concerted approach”. “Everything is linked.”
On the general situation in the Middle East, Mr Solana felt it was no longer tenable to be content with speeches when the crisis between Hamas and Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah was at its greatest. He seems to be expressing regret that the EU and the West had not rallied to the support of the Palestinian Authority President sooner. The priority would now be to respond to the Palestinians' need for material aid - through the temporary international mechanism, TIM - in the West Bank, but without penalising the civilian population of Gaza which “cannot be abandoned” to Hamas rule. Mr Solana, like virtually everyone who spoke in the debate, Marc Otte, EU special representative to the Middle East, Mohamed Sbieh, assistant general secretary of the Arab League, who had come to present the “Arab initiative” and various EP, Knesset, Egyptian and Jordanian leaders and members, stressed the need and judicious choice to give full support to Mr Abbas, whose qualities as a moderate were highlighted. Several speakers felt that this compliment was a double-edged sword for Mr Abbas, and they called for it not to be over-used publicly. His qualities should have been seen earlier, responded former Fatah Housing Minister Mohamed Shtayyeh, who pointed out to one of those praising Mr Abbas - Ophir Pinez-Paz - that it should have been seen earlier that Israel was trying to put a spanner in the works and that the West was not giving Mr Abbas enough support. Mr Solana, affirming the will to give unreserved support to the head of the Palestinian Authority, announced a meeting of the various contact groups (Arab, European and Quartet) in Cairo in mid-July and a “Madrid-style (October 1991) international conference” to be held at a time still to be decided. “Too little, too late,” said Luisa Morgantini (GUE, Italy), who began the debate just after the preliminary statements. Pasqualina Napolitano (PES, Italy) said right from the start that in terms of victims and suffering, we had already gone beyond the limits. She said: “The time has come to act, and not just in terms of conflict management, but in direct action”. She criticised the way the EU had handled the situation which resulted from the free election of Hamas. “When we encourage elections to be held, we have to accept the result,” she said, and she did not want the European reaction to further aggravate the situation. In trying to get rid of Hamas, we risk seeing the emergence of other more hard-line movements, was the substance of what she said. Later, in response to various criticisms on what was deemed to be the EU's mistake in suspending aid, Mr Solana said that no one was obliged to help everyone at all times. Veronique De Keyser (PES, Belgium) in particular, noted that “to speak about peace (now) seems somewhat surrealist”. “We want to believe,” she said, “in a succession of plans and initiatives”. (fb)