BRUSSELS (EJP)---Germany will host a conference on the Middle East in Berlin on June 24 aimed at strengthening police and justice in the Palestinian territories.
Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said last Friday at an informal meeting of EU Foreign Ministers in Brdo, Slovenia, that he hopes European Union countries will agree on a "joint European effort" to help build up the justice and police systems in the Palestinian territories.
Chancellor Angela Merkel declared earlier this year that Germany agreed to a request from Middle East Quartet representative Tony Blair to hold the meeting on efforts to train Palestinian police.
The conference is expected to include representatives from the EU, the Mideast Quartet (US, EU,UN, Russia), Israel, and Arab countries among others.
In the meantime, Russian United Nations Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said Monday that a Middle East conference hosted by Moscow this summer would energise the peace process and would assist in achieving the aim of an Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement by the end of the year.
"Certainly, the way we look at it, the meeting that we are planning to convene in Moscow would be serving the purpose of energising the political efforts," Churkin said during a press conference.
"It is a part of our obligation we feel as a member of the Quartet, in support of the joint effort which is being spearheaded by the United States for obvious reasons."
Churkin said that the Israeli-Palestinian issue would be the main focus of the summit but the other disputes between Israel and her neighbours, Lebanon and Syria, could also be addressed.
"I don't think anybody disagrees that if there is an opportunity to broaden the horizon it would be very useful because the ultimate deal in the Middle East cannot be reached without all the three tracks taken care of the Syrian track and the Lebanese track," Churkin said.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov recently travelled to the Middle East to gather support for the Moscow summit initiative.
Syria and Hamas
At their informal meeting in Slovenia last Friday, the EU Foreign Ministers agreed that Syria and Hamas must be brought into the reconciliation process if peace in the Middle East is to be achieved.
They however ruled out direct contact with Hamas since the EU lists the Islamic group as a terror organization and has no formal relations with it as it refuses to recognize the right of the state of Israel to exist and to reject violence.
“We do not have contacts with Hamas directly, but we have been talking in particular with our Egyptian friends, to help cooperate with the Egyptians for them to lead potential negotiations between the different factions in Gaza,” Javier Solana, the EU's foreign-policy chief, was quoted as saying.
“We think that Syria is an important country in the region, and we would like it to play the most constructive role possible. We hope (the Syrian leadership) will think about that,” he said.
The EU's relationship with Syria has been strained in recent years over the issue of Syria's political involvement in Lebanon.
“We are certainly in a more difficult situation than we were last year ahead of the Annapolis peace conference. At that time, there was a hope that Syria's participation in the conference could lead to further constructive steps,” the German Foreign Minister said.
The EU believes that Syria, whose largely oil-based economy faces severe challenges from its dwindling oil reserves and its constricted labour market, could be persuaded to play a more cooperative role in the region in return for EU aid in modernizing its economy.
“The EU's relationship with Syria can go very far, and we would like very much to having a real player, a constructive player in the region,” Solana said.
Syria and the EU are linked by a cooperation agreement since 1977. The two sides agreed to update the accord in 2004 but EU member states have yet to ratify the deal, saying that Syria has not yet proved its willingness to act on key political and foreign-policy reforms.
EU ministers had hoped for Syrian help to solve the ongoing crisis in Lebanon over parliament's failure to elect a new president, but the hope has not been fulfilled.
“We agreed that we should coordinate our efforts with Syria more closely. We will discuss visits to Damascus especially and make our messages more harmonized, so the Syrian side don't take advantage of differences that might arise or be felt on our side,” Slovenian Foreign Minister Dimitrij Rupel, whose country chairs the European Union until end of June, said.
