Dina Ezzat reports on yet another delay in convening the Union for the Mediterranean Summit Today, in Paris, Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul- Gheit will meet with his French counterpart Bernard Kouchner and Miguel Mauratinos, the Spanish Envoy for the Summit of the Union for the Mediterranean (UFM). The announced objective of the meeting is to discuss the fate of the UFM summit scheduled for 20 and 21 March 2011 , with the possible participation of US President Barack Obama. The Paris meeting's un-announced objective, which is more or less an open secret, is to discuss alternative dates for a summit that was originally planned to be held in June of this year as well as Egypt's reluctance to participate in any preparatory meeting attended by Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman, who has still to apologize for offensive statements made against President Hosni Mubarak and Egypt before he took office in the current Israeli government. "A final decision on the summit [and its date] will be decided at the meeting," Foreign Minister Aboul-Gheit said on Monday. One reason behind the expected delay is the failure of the US administration to give a sustained push to Palestinian-Israeli negotiations. Benyamin Netanyahu's government remains unwilling to succumb to American and international - not to mention Arab - demands for the suspension of the construction of illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories. Arabs, including the otherwise accommodating Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, argue that not only are the settlements illegal but erode the land on which any future independent Palestinian state can be built, rendering future negotiations redundant. Cairo's assessment is that the US administration has not completely abandoned its efforts to convince Netanyahu to squeeze settlement construction. And while the Palestinian Authority is granting Washington a few more weeks beyond the tentative 8 November deadline agreed last month at a high level Arab meeting, Egypt's top diplomat is awaiting a final word from the US. Netanyahu was in Washington this week for talks with US officials, including US Vice President Joseph Biden but not President Obama, who is on an Asian tour. In the absence of any serious developments improving the chances of the direct negotiations the US forced back to life early last September being endorsed, many Arab capitals that are party to the UFM find little reason for their leaders to attend a summit with the Israeli prime minister to discuss future cooperation. A meeting for Arab participants in the UFM hosted by the Foreign Ministry in Cairo on Sunday echoed skepticism over the chances of the next UFM summit, scheduled to convene in Barcelona on the third week of this month, taking place. "The Arab assessment is that the current state of Palestinian-Israeli negotiations leaves little room for a successful summit to take place," Aboul- Gheit said on Monday. He added that any agreement on a consensual final declaration to be adopted by the participating leaders would be tricky. The final declaration, Egyptian and European diplomatic sources say, would have to include some lines on the fate of the peace process. Arab leaders would demand clear language condemning the continued construction of illegal Israeli settlement construction which Israel would resist, leaving the host and the co-chairs of the summit facing an embarrassing impasse. The same problem faced last July's UFM ministerial meeting on cooperation over water resources, an increasingly pressing issue for the region. According to UFM sources there is no reason to expect a better scenario for the summit. Meanwhile, the US administration's desire for the US president to participate - Obama would be present in Portugal for a NATO summit - has waned. Only US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton will now attend should the summit convene on time. Concerns are inevitably growing over the fate of the UFM. According to one source at the secretariat, while a new delay would not be a final nail in the coffin it could become so should the delay be indefinitely extended. Foreign Minister Aboul-Gheit said on Monday that Egypt -- which with France is the co-chair of the summit - is keen to work to "secure the continuity" of the UFM through serious participation from its close to 50 member states. He promised "Arab commitment to continue with the high- officials' meetings" to discuss future cooperation across the board: environmental, ecological and economic. The UFM was launched in Paris in 2008 during a summit jointly chaired by President Hosni Mubark and French President Nicolas Sarokzy. Essentially a political caprice of Sarkozy, the UPM was supposed to succeed where the Barcelona Process for Mediterranean Cooperation had failed since its launch in 1995 and secure Mediterranean cooperation with or without a successful Middle East peace process. Two years later and Sarkozy's dream is haunted by the open-ended saga of the Arab-Israeli struggle. Not even the most optimistic diplomat will promise that the peace process will not do to the UFM what it did to the Barcelona Process - bring it to a sad end.
