Meetings on Middle East peace are multiplying, however, as Dina Ezzat reports, the result remains zero On Monday, in the Finnish city of Tampere, foreign ministers of the European Union along with their counterparts from Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey and the Palestinian Authority will meet to discuss the ambitious objectives of peace, security, prosperity and cooperation in the Mediterranean region. As indicated in the Barcelona Process, upon its launch in 1995, and in follow-up initiatives on the Mediterranean region, cooperation and stability in this part of the world would require a settlement to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Dormant as it is, the Middle East peace process will capture the attention of participating ministers, especially during a working dinner dedicated to the issue. But diplomats do not expect much to come out of the meeting. Egyptian and other Arab diplomats arriving in Tampere over the weekend will hold coordination meetings as they try to induce this eighth conference of the foreign ministers of the Barcelona Process to lend as much support as possible to reviving the peace process. They will also try to garner support for the declared Arab objective of securing a large international presence to a process that has clear endgames and general deadlines. However, diplomats say it is unlikely the Tampere meeting will produce the kind of result reached at a meeting of the EuroMediterranean forum, to which Israel was not party, held last month in the Spanish city of Alicante. The presence of Israel's foreign minister in Tampere, the diplomats said, would make it difficult to move much beyond blurred diplomatic lines, as has been the case for several years. It is even unlikely, diplomats say, that the foreign ministers meeting in the Finnish city will adopt the line of last week's UN General Assembly resolution that reprimanded Israel for using military force against Palestinian civilians. This too, diplomats say, is a non-starter with the presence of the top Israeli diplomat. Last week, Arab and European (especially French) diplomats at the UN managed to secure the support of over 70 per cent of the General Assembly members to the resolution. The vote came only days after the US had vetoed an Arab-proposed UN Security Council resolution condemning the Israeli killing of innocent Palestinians in Beit Hanoun. Arab countries had also required the presence of an international monitoring force on the ground to provide protection for the Palestinian population under Israeli occupation. But in Tampere, it is unlikely that Israel will even agree to discuss the issue of an international presence, although some Israeli cabinet ministers have been proposing it as a method to end the launching of Qassam rockets being fired by Palestinian resistance on Israeli towns. The only thing that Israel is willing to agree to at this point, Arab and Israeli diplomats agree, is to require Palestinians to compose a national unity government and then perhaps soft- initiate Palestinian-Israeli talks mostly on procedural matters, including the exchange of prisoners, the transfer of Palestinian financial revenues held up by the Israeli government, and the crossings, especially the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt whose operations agreement, often violated by Israel, is to expire over the weekend. This was the line proposed by the US at a meeting of senior officials of the Quartet, the joint but largely ineffective united Middle East brokership body that brings together the US, UN, Russia and the EU. This language is what the US is hoping for in Jordan, towards the end of the week, if it manages to put together an Arab-American meeting that would also discuss the Palestinian- Israeli conflict. The attempt of some European capitals, notably Paris, Rome and Madrid, to hold a new world conference on Middle East peace, as was declared last week by French President Jacques Chirac and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Zapatero, seems to be a no-go at this moment, as Egyptian and European diplomats agree. The diplomats acknowledge that the support of Russia and, for that matter, some key regional players, including Egypt as demonstrated during the talks held on Monday in Cairo between President Hosni Mubarak and visiting Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi, would not provide the international conference the impetus it needs to be held. In Cairo this week, Prodi admitted that without the prior consent of both Palestinians and Israelis, an international conference remains an idea rather than a project. While admitting that on-and-off meetings on the Middle East peace process have failed to even initiate movement, Egyptian diplomats say that in the absence of action, Cairo cannot just walk away. "We are still committed to advocating the right positions to make sure that they are what is tabled for international discussion," commented an informed Egyptian diplomatic source. It is with this objective in mind, plus a wide range of bilateral interests, that President Mubarak is planning a European tour in the second week of December. Taking him to Ireland, France and Germany, Mubarak's tour will offer a fresh opportunity for European leaders, including those like Chirac who has sent his foreign minister to Cairo, to get an Arab perspective on the negative consequences of leaving the suffering of Palestinians under occupation unattended to by the international community. In press statements this week, Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa underlined what he called the "crucial importance" of high-level Arab diplomatic efforts to keep the Palestinian cause at the centre of attention of an international community that seems overwhelmed by many other developments in the Middle East. "We shall not give up. We shall continue to bring this issue to the attention of the international community until a fair settlement is reached," Moussa said. For his part, Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul-Gheit stressed that in addition to their long-term objective of securing the revival of the Middle East peace process, Egypt's diplomatic efforts have an immediate target: to find a way of putting an end to the daily humanitarian suffering of Palestinians in the occupied territories.
