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Israeli President Shimon Peres (L) delivers a speech after he received a Honour Diploma of Friendship to mark the scientific cooperation between France and Israel, on March 11, 2008, at the Institut de France in Paris.
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PARIS (EJP)---Israeli President Shimon Peres on Wednesday expressed his support for French President Nicolas Sarkozy's plans for the creation of a Mediterranean Union to promote trade and cooperation.
"I support 100 percent the plan," Peres, who is on a five-day state visit to France, said in an interview with French radio Europe 1.
"The entire (Israeli) government is in favour of Sarkozy’s initiative of course," he added.
"North Europe countries, the Maghreb countries in the south and the Arab countries in the middle, why not cooperate on what is possiblre?," he asked, recalling that Europe started with a union on coal and steel.
A summit meeting between the EU countries and Mediterranean countries, including Israel, is scheduled to take place on 13 July in Paris when France takes over the six-month EU presidency.
Ahead of a EU summit meeting at the end of this week, France and Germany settled their differences over President Sarkozy's plan to create the EU-Mediterranean new forum.
Sarkozy is expected to outline the compromise at the meeting of European Union leaders in Brussels on Thursday.
The French president originally envisaged setting up an organisation exclusively for states bordering the Mediterranean but Germany balked at the idea fearing it would freeze out northern EU countries from a vital geo-political region.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel forced Sarkozy last week to open up the club to all 27 EU states.
The new union is intended to replace the so-called Barcelona Process which was launched in 1995 with much fanfare but which has made little headway in building cross-border business.