BRUSSELS (EJP)---French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner called Tuesday for a European "roadmap" to help bring peace to the Middle East, in an effort to give the EU more weight in the region.
"We do not have sufficient weight when it comes to the peace process,"
Kouchner, whose country holds the EU's rotating presidency, told members of
the European Parliament in Brussels.
"We propose to our friends the foreign ministers and to you (MEPs to
define a roadmap that we could draw up in the first months of the French
presidency," he said.
"It's not about making proposals contrary to the Americans, nor contrary to
anyone," he said, adding that "during the change of US administration there
will be room for these proposals" from Europe.
The change of US leadership, after the presidential election in November, "will be the moment to propose a form of partnership that will take more account of the symbolic, and real, weight of the European Union," he said.
"We will have to propose this particular roadmap to our American friends," said. "This is about giving European foreign policy its rightful place."
Kouchner did not say exactly what France would offer in addition to the roadmap drafted by the Middle East diplomatic quartet of the EU, United States, Russia and the United Nations.
That document foresees the peaceful co-existence of two states, Israel and Palestine, and calls for a halt to Jewish settlement activity in Palestinian territories and an end to Palestinian attacks against Israel.
The plan has made little progress since it was drafted in 2003, but Israel and the Palestinians agreed last November to relaunch it during a conference in the United States that restarted the peace process after a seven-year
hiatus.