EU seeks to mend post-Arafat mideast fences

The EU today opens two days of talks with Israel and its Arab neighbours to take stock of fresh chances for Mideast peace less than three weeks after the death of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

The Europeans are looking to the long-divided Palestinians to use the early days of the post-Arafat era to unite and, with Israel, implement the dormant “road map” peace plan, drafted by the United Nations, the US, the EU and Russia.

The plan, which envisions a Palestinian state alongside Israel, stalled shortly after its launch in June 2003.

The two-day event begins with the EU – led by Dutch Foreign Minister Ben Bot whose country holds the rotating EU presidency – holding separate back-to-back sessions with the Israeli and Arab delegations.

The Euro-Mediterranean meeting is also an opportunity for Libya – which for years has been cold-shouldered by the EU and the US for sponsoring terrorism - to show it is eager to improve ties and join the EU’s economic and political Mediterranean outreach program.

EU officials say that can only happen if Tripoli accepts Israel as a negotiating partner and frees five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor convicted of deliberately infecting hundreds of Libyan children with the Aids virus.

They were sentenced to death in May, and foreign legal experts say the trial was fraught with irregularities.

Speaking of the post-Arafat era yesterday, Raanan Gissin, a spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said in Jerusalem: “I think there is an understanding that this is an opportunity that both sides cannot miss.”

In separate interviews with Newsweek magazine, Sharon and the interim Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, said they would be willing to meet after the January 9 election that will choose a successor to Arafat, who died on November 11 at a hospital in France.

The Euro-Mediterranean meeting was to be attended by Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom and Nabil Shaath, his Palestinian counterpart, as well as the foreign ministers of the 25 EU nations and those of Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Lebanon, Syria, Tunisia and Turkey. Libya and Mauritania were attending as observers.

The biannual event is the only regional forum where Israel and its Arab neighbours meet to discuss economic cooperation and peace efforts.