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Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos.
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HERZLIYA (EJP)---Spain’s Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos said the current Spanish EU presidency “will engage to improve EU’s relations with Israel”.
The former Mideast EU special representative told a conference in Herzliya, near Tel Aviv, that Europe’s policy towards the region and with Israel “improved considerably.”
“Due to the lack of influence of Europe in the region, the European Union understood that there should be a shift in the Union's policy on foreign affairs.”
He stated that the biggest threat to Europe is radicalization and Islamic terrorism in the Continent.
He also said that that Spain will mitigate between Israel and the moderate Arab countries in order to strengthen them while confronting their internal and regional affairs.
Moratinos, who chairs the meetings of the EU Council of Foreign Ministers, met on Monday with his Israeli counterpart, Avigdor Lieberman, who gave him the report “Gaza Operation Investigations: Update” that Israel presented to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon as a response to the war crimes allegations that appeared in the Goldstone Report on the Gaza war.
Spain abstained in the UN General Assembly vote last year that endorsed the report.
“Israel is a democratic country that protects its citizens according to international law,” Lieberman said. “The IDF is the most moral army in the world, and this is manifest precisely in the way it deals with the very worst terrorists, when the IDF does everything possible not to harm innocent civilians whom Hamas uses as human shields.”