Brussels, 19/01/2009 (Agence Europe) - The EU, a number of its member states and, above all, the Czech Presidency, represented by its Prime Minister, seem to have seized the opportunity to persuade all parties that peace talks must be restarted and confidence restored, with a ceasefire just announced in Gaza after over three weeks of intensive bombing of the Hamas-controlled Palestinian coastal enclave.
Responding to the invitation of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to attend a hastily arranged summit, Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his Italian and Spanish counterparts Silvio Berlusconi and José Luis Zapatero travelled to Sharm el-Sheikh on Sunday. The summit was also attended by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, King Abdullah II of Jordan, Turkish President Abdullah Gül and the leader of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas. The two sides directly involved in hostilities, Hamas and Israel, were not invited. The European leaders then moved on to Israel, carrying their message that they were committed to action to consolidate the ceasefire, to speeding up humanitarian aid and, lastly, to offering assistance to Egypt and Israel to tackle the traffic in weapons for Hamas. A day earlier, at a press conference, Mubarak said that Egypt was not under any obligation on this last point under the terms of the agreement that had been signed on Friday by Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. On this point, Sarkozy said in Sharm el-Sheikh, “Ms Merkel, Mr Brown and I have signed a letter making available to both Israel and Egypt the military, diplomatic and technical means to put an end to arms trafficking”.
The Sharm el-Sheikh summit, coming one day before the meeting of Arab leaders in Kuwait and two days after the meeting in Qatar of “hard-line” Arab states, plus Iran and Islamic countries (not Saudi Arabia, Egypt or the Palestinian Authority, but with the leaders of Hamas) was felt to have provided direct and clear political support for Hosni Mubarak, whose country has been strongly criticised by the other Arab countries.
The Egyptian president was delighted to announce that, over the previous 24 hours, “there have been signs that the crisis is subsiding”. In his speech the previous day, he again pressed Israel to stop the bombing and withdraw its troops. Egypt, Mubarak said in the same speech, was working to make the border with the Gaza Strip secure and “will never accept” any foreign presence on its soil.
“Egypt has been criticised but it has been doing good work,” said Sarkozy, who jointly chaired the summit. “The fighting has to stop. We are at the beginning. We have to speed up (the process) leading to the creation of two states” co-existing peacefully. He went on to say that, for the moment, we must “strengthen the ceasefire” and he backed the “humanitarian summit (which) will be organised by Egypt in a few days' time to allow aid to be delivered” to the people of Gaza. The main thing, he said, was to “rebuild confidence” and “for that reason, to end arms trafficking”. He went on to say that the crisis had offered an opportunity that had to be taken “to put back on the table for discussion a major conference that would lay the foundations of a lasting peace, and we will need everybody”.
No information was given on the organisation of the Sharm el-Sheikh meeting, held on the joint initiative of Cairo and Paris. Were Mubarak and Sarkozy acting as joint presidents of the UfM (Union for the Mediterranean)? This suggestion was put by press, but was not confirmed. The Presidency of the EU was there, with European External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner, but not EU High Representative for the CFSP Javier Solana, who was not invited either by the Egyptians or by the Czech Presidency, even though he usually forms part of the European troika. Those surrounding Solana say only that he is working to organise the European access control mission at Rafah. (F.B./transl.rt)