Spain, France and Italy agreed on Thursday to work on a joint plan to try to resolve the Middle East conflict, calling for a total ceasefire and suggesting they could send truce monitors to the area.
It was not clear how the European initiative would fit in with existing peace plans for the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including the stalled US-backed "Road Map".
"Peace in the Middle East, to a great extent, means peace internationally. Stability and security in the Middle East means stability and security for the world," Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero told a news conference.
Zapatero proposed the countries work on a solution when he met French President Jacques Chirac in the northern town of Girona. They later spoke to Italy's prime minister.
Zapatero said they wanted to bring their proposal to an EU summit in December, adding that the three countries would work closely with EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana. "Observation forces" could be sent to monitor any truce, he said. In Israel, officials were not immediately available to comment on the European plan, few details of which were provided. The Road Map peace plan is still officially the policy supported by Israel and its chief backer, Washington.
Spain hosted a Middle East peace conference in Madrid in 1991 that opened the way to direct peace talks between Israel and its neighbours. Last September, Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos, the European Union's Middle East envoy until 2003, floated the idea of a new one.
Asked whether talks were being held with the so-called Quartet of Middle East peace brokers - United States, European Union, Russia and United Nations - on the latest proposals, Zapatero mentioned the three European countries' peacekeeping role in Lebanon after the July-August conflict there. "This initiative is France, Spain and Italy exercising their responsibility - almost their duty - as three Mediterranean powers with forces now in Lebanon.
"We count on support from Germany and Britain and other European countries. We are working with Solana to mobilise all the diplomatic and political resources we need." The Spanish prime minister said the first step would be an end to "all violence", which is also the Quartet's primary goal.
"First we need an immediate end to all forms of violence, including terrorism, and then for a national unity government to be formed in Palestine that will be recognised by the rest of the world," Zapatero said after meeting Chirac. He also said Israel and the Palestinians should hand over each others' prisoners and open up a political dialogue.
"A further future step could be to send observation forces to the area to make sure the ceasefire holds," he added. The three countries have already sent soldiers to Lebanon to watch over the ceasefire after this year's war between Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas.
Last week, 19 Palestinian civilians were killed in an Israeli artillery barrage in the Gaza Strip and on Wednesday, rockets fired from Gaza killed one woman and wounded several other residents of an Israeli border town.
"The situation is getting ever more dramatic by the day," Chirac said, offering France's full support to the initiative, the biggest international project Zapatero has put forward since taking power in 2004.
In Rome, Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi said the countries had an "obligation to look for a way to get out of this situation and prepare ... a peace process."
While there have been attempts by senior European officials to promote peace between Israel and the Palestinians in the past, most notably by Solana, Israel has tended to support initiatives only if the United States is involved.
Comments
Comments are closed.