BICOM

European Foreign ministers called on Israel and the Palestinians to resume negotiations yesterday. The EU’s foreign ministers met in Brussels for their monthly meeting a day after Quartet envoys met in the same city. Following a meeting of the 27 EU foreign ministers, EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton told reporters, “We’ve suggested that there should be within the next few weeks – it says four weeks in the [Quartet] statement – the opportunity for discussions to start about the preparations.” Ashton, who is in close contact with Israeli and Palestinian leaders, said the objective was to have proposals for talks ready within three months. “What I’m keen to do is get the process moving and see at what point it would be the right moment for people to actually sit in the room together and start to work out the detail.”

The call was welcomed in Jerusalem as the type of international position needed to get talks back on track. An Israeli official told the Jerusalem Post that the Palestinian Authority would only return to talks if the international community made clear that there is no way to bypass negotiations on the way to statehood 

Speaking on the attempts by the EU to reach a joint position on the Palestinian statehood bid at the UN last month, French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said that the Palestinian bid had challenged EU unity. “You see two tendencies appearing more and more among the 27 [member states].” Juppe added that “a lot of energy” would be needed to keep the EU countries unified over the issue. Ashton, however, offered a different assessment from Juppe and said “I don’t see any division among EU countries on that point. There is no new magic formula in this. What we know are the issues that need to be addressed. The question is the political will to address them.”

Later this week Abbas will meet French President Nicolas Sarkozy in Paris, following his visit to Colombia, to discuss the Palestinian bid for statehood recognition at the UN, PA Foreign Minister Riad al-Malki said yesterday to AFP. The PA foreign minister said that the Palestinian leadership would meet with Sarkozy because France is “also permanent member of the Security Council.”