EU foreign ministers and their Mediterranean counterparts meet Wednesday and Thursday to take stock of their five-year-old EuroMed partnership, trying mightily to ignore the violence flaring between Israel and the Palestinians.
Barring a sudden letup in the fighting, which has left 219 dead in six weeks, mostly Palestinians, the ministers were likely to accent economic and social cooperation, leaving the partnership's political aspect for another time.
EuroMed was established in Barcelona in 1995 to foster cooperation in those three areas among the EU's 15 nations and their 12 Mediterranean partners: Algeria, the Palestinian Authority, Cyprus, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Malta, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia and Turkey.
A EuroMed free-trade zone was envisioned by 2010.
But five years on, the meeting in this Mediterranean port city is to be held in a hair-trigger atmosphere, against "a particularly difficult political backdrop," said an EU source.
But he added it could still play a role in "peace-making and a resumption of contacts" between the warring parties.
That may have been a bit optimistic, after weekend talks between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and US President Bill Clinton yielded no breakthrough as fresh violence raged on in the Palestinian territories.
Israel insisted Monday that there would be no revival of peace talks until there the spiral of violence ends.
Some Arab countries in recent days have asked France, which as holder of the current EU presidency is hosting the meeting, to put off the meeting until the Middle East calms down.
Not a chance, French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine said Monday on the sidelines of the Western European Union's final meeting.
"Even if we are in a pessimistic situation," he said, "this (EuroMed) meeting must go on.
"It is clear," he conceded, "that the meeting will be held in an unfavorable context, but as EU presidency, we believe that Euro-Mediterranean cooperation is important enough in and of itself that it can go on irrespective of the vicissitudes of the (Middle East) peace process.
"We know," Vedrine added, "that the holding of this meeting poses problems for certain Arab countries, but we think it nevertheless should be held."
In the context of the Barcelona agreement, the EU has already signed association accords with Tunisia, Israel, Morocco, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority.
Negotiations have been concluded, but not yet signed, with Egypt. And talks are under way with Algeria, Syria and Lebanon.
The EU is accentuating development of exchanges among its Mediterranean partners, seeing this as essential to attract foreign investment to the region's south -- meaning the non-EU partners -- and foster economic development.
An improvement in existing EU aid programs to the Mediterranean countries is also on Brussels' calendar; 3.435 billion Euros (2.954 billion dollars) were ear-marked for the MEDA-I that ran 1995 to 1999, but only 26 percent of those credits -- 890 million Euros -- have been used.
The EU has proposed a rationalization and simplification of the mechanics of the program, even as negotiations are going on over the size of the MEDA II program for 2000-2006, for which the European Commission has proposed 6.7 billion Euros.
Last September the commission, which is the EU's administrative arm, called for a "new momentum" for the EuroMed partnership as a signal that eastward enlargement was not the EU's only priority -- MARSEILLE, France (AFP)
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