BICOM

Israel’s Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman arrived in Brussels on Monday and will today meet with EU foreign ministers as part of the annual EU-Israel Association Council. The body is part of an on going EU-Israel relationship, which exists to strengthen ties and facilitate discussions on bilateral issues and developments in the Middle East and their impact on the region.

Following technical discussions this year and last, the EU and Israel have outlined up to 60 concrete actions that can be pursued under the existing EU-Israel Action Plan agreement signed in 2005. These are areas of cooperation that are allowed for under the existing agreement but have yet to be implemented.

Lieberman is also widely expected to ask his European counterparts to include Hezbollah on the EU list of terrorist organisations, according to Israeli officials. The call comes after last week’s terrorist attack on Israeli tourists in Bulgaria, which Israel said it believed Hezbollah was responsible for.

On the side-lines of the meeting, Lieberman, according to a report in Maariv, will tell EU foreign ministers that there is concrete evidence that Hezbollah, backed by Iran, was involved in the bombing of an Israeli tourist bus in Bulgaria last week in which five Israelis and a Bulgarian bus driver were killed, the paper said. Lieberman also plans to ask his counterparts to increase the security of visiting Israeli tourists and Jewish institutions in their countries, the paper added.

Contrary to Hamas, the Islamist group that holds power in the Gaza Strip, Hezbollah has not been put on the EU list of terrorist organisations.

Lieberman, meanwhile, met yesterday with his French counterpart Laurent Fabius in Brussels and warned that whilst Israel would not “interfere” in Syria, any attempt by the Syrian regime to arm Hezbollah “would be crossing a red line”, adding that in such a case “Israel would not restrain itself from acting forcefully”.