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Mubarak Seeks Greater European Role in Peace Process
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak left Cairo Tuesday for Berlin, Germany, on his three-nation European tour to seek greater European role in reviving the moribund Middle East peace process.
During his five-day visit to Germany, Romania and Russia, Mubarak is expected to focus on the dangerous situation in the Mideast after Israel escalated attacks on Palestinians, Syria and Lebanon.
Mubarak will explore ways of boosting the European role in helping salvage the Palestinian-Israeli peace talks and seek the support of the three countries for an Egyptian-Jordan joint peace plan, which calls reducing Palestinian-Israeli violence and taking confidence-building measures, Foreign Minister Amr Moussa said Monday.
The peace initiative reportedly urges Israel to lift the blockades on Palestinian towns in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, withdraw to positions before the outbreak of the current violence, and freeze new settlement activity. In return, the Palestinians would guarantee a renewal of security cooperation with Israel and end incitement of violence.
Then, after a period of calm which is to be supervised by the U. N. Security Council, the European Union (EU), Egypt and Jordan, the two sides will return to the negotiating table for a final settlement within one year.
As U.S. President George W. Bush stepped back from his predecessor Bill Clinton's active mediating role and place the peace process to the back burner, Egypt is turning to the EU and Russia for their active roles.
The Egyptian-Jordanian peace proposal indicates that the Arabs are underscoring the role of the EU and Russia in helping resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict, hoping the two players could balance the U.S. which has been accused of bias in favor of Israel and being indifferent to the ongoing violence in the Middle East.
The EU and Russia's active involvement would then prod Washington, which has enraged the Arabs by vetoing a U.N. draft resolution on deploying an international observer force to the Palestinian territories last month, to refresh its efforts to push forward the peace process positively and effectively, analysts here said.
In the meantime, the EU has also been seeking a more active role in the Middle East, as the rich-European club has become the largest non-military donor to the region with an average financial aid of 800 million euros (over 750 U.S. dollars) per year and the biggest economic partner of Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Israel.
"The EU does not want to play an economic role only, but also to play a political role, like the United States," said Belgian Foreign Minister Louis Michel during his Visit to Israel on Monday. Belgium will take over the EU's rotating presidency in July.
Russia, one of the sponsors of the Mideast peace process that kicked off after 1991 Madrid peace conference, has been eclipsed by its co-sponsor the United States. But Moscow was seeking to regain its traditional influence in the region by contributing to the peacemaking drive.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Moussa said Monday that the Arab world is keen on activating both the EU and Russia's role in mediating between the Arabs and Israelis.
"The dangerous situation in the region has made it imperative to coordinate U.S.-EU-Russian efforts," the minister told reporters when commenting on Mubarak's visit.
The Mideast peace process has been deadlocked since the eruption of the Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation, triggered by Israeli violation of an Islamic holy site in East Jerusalem on September 28.
The ongoing violence has so far left more than 470 people dead, most of them Palestinians, and thousands more injured.
In another escalation of the situation, Israeli warplanes last Sunday night bombed the Bekaa Valley in east Lebanon, where Syrian troops maintain radar bases with tanks and armored personnel carriers, killing three Syrian soldiers and injuring six others.
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