“Growing consensus” in the EU on Iran sanctions. The European Voice reports:
There is a “growing consensus” that the EU will have to take unilateral action if it proves impossible in the United Nations to agree to impose sanctions on Iran for continuing to develop its nuclear power programme, Finland’s foreign minister, Alexander Stubb, said today (Sunday). Stubb was speaking at the end of an informal gathering in Finland of six EU foreign ministers, Turkey’s foreign minister and Catherine Ashton, the EU’s foreign policy chief. Stubb, who expressed his hopes of an agreement in the UN, said that he and his colleagues had not gone into details on the kind of sanctions the EU could agree to impose.
Bernard Kouchner, France’s foreign minister, said there was a consensus that any sanctions should not be targeted at the Iranian people, but at the economy, through sectors such as banking or insurance.
The day before, on Saturday, Stubb had sounded more confident. According to Reuters, he said there was “consensus enough” within the EU to secure support for a unilateral move:
“Time is running out, so I’m sure this is going to be something, if the U.N. Security Council fails, that we’ll deal with when we have our EU foreign ministers’ meeting on the 22nd,” he said. “That’s when we’ll get into the detail (of possible sanctions)… There is consensus enough.”
Potential for Middle East peace. New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman says that despite Israeli-US row there is momentum for negotiations:
Mitchell’s and Netanyahu’s aides struck an informal deal: If America got talks going, there would be no announcements of buildings in East Jerusalem, nothing to embarrass the Palestinians and force them to walk. Netanyahu agreed, U.S. officials say, but made clear he couldn’t commit to anything publicly. So what happened? Biden arrived the day after the proximity talks started and out came an announcement from Israel’s Interior Ministry that Israel had just approved plans for 1,600 new housing units in Arab East Jerusalem.
Netanyahu said he was blindsided. It’s probably true in the narrow sense. The move seems to have been part of a competition between two of Netanyahu’s right-wing Sephardi ministers from the religious Shas Party over who can be the greater champion of building homes for Sephardi orthodox Jews in East Jerusalem. It is a measure of how much Israel takes our support for granted and how out of touch the Israeli religious right is with America’s strategic needs.
This whole fracas also distracts us from the potential of this moment: Only a right-wing prime minister, like Netanyahu, can make a deal over the West Bank; Netanyahu’s actual policies on the ground there have helped Palestinians grow their economy and put in place their own rebuilt security force, which is working with the Israeli Army to prevent terrorism; Palestinian leaders Mahmoud Abbas and Salam Fayyad are as genuine and serious about working toward a solution as any Israel can hope to find; Hamas has halted its attacks on Israel from Gaza; with the Sunni Arabs obsessed over the Iran threat, their willingness to work with Israel has never been higher, and the best way to isolate Iran is to take the Palestinian conflict card out of Tehran’s hand.
State-building in the West Bank. In an opinion piece in the Daily Star, Daoud Kuttab notes:
Perhaps the most interesting new aspect in the upcoming indirect talks is what has been happening on the ground in the Occupied Territories. Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad has been active in executing a strategic plan that is expected to lead to a de facto Palestinian state within a year and a half. Non-violent protest has also been on the rise, whereas violent acts and suicide bombings have been drastically decreased.
Ashton on Middle East tour. Today the EU foreign policy chief begins her visit to the region. The Times reports:
Lady Ashton and a small entourage of advisers flew to Egypt in a chartered aircraft last night and she will then travel to Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian territories before heading to Moscow on Friday for a meeting of the international quartet on the Middle East. She will meet foreign ministers and presidents of Syria and Lebanon and possibly Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister.
She will prepare for her trip with a telephone briefing from her old friend Tony Blair, the quartet’s envoy and the man who ennobled her in 1999 when she was head of Hertfordshire Health Authority. Mr Blair’s lack of a breakthrough has shown how tricky the path to peace is. Last week he bleakly declared: “At the beginning of a process like this, in my experience, trust is always in short supply. You build it by actions on the ground. We are in a situation now where words actually won’t create the trust on either side.” (…)
Lady Ashton’s office could not say yesterday whether she would raise again the issue of the use by alleged Israeli agents of British passports in the assassination of a leading Hamas member in Dubai. Nor could it say whether she would push the European Parliament’s call for the release of the Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit from Gaza.
Lady Ashton is under pressure from the European Parliament to prioritise human rights issues, including the plight of Coptic Christians in Egypt, where eight were gunned down in January. She is also keen to revive an EU-Syria Association Agreement believed to be held up by human rights concerns.
Above all she will be expected to get more for the EU from the enormous sums of money it spends on development programmes, especially the €1 billion (£907 million) a year spent in the Palestinian territories. Egypt will receive €449 million in 2011-13, Syria €129 million in the same period, Lebanon €150 million, Jordan €223 million and Israel €4 million.
“She will not solve the peace process on her first flying visit,” said Hugo Brady, of the Centre for European Reform. “The full glare of the international media is on her now to see if she will make any mistakes but she simply has to show that she is an engaged player and not create a vacuum for criticism to flow into. “The EU has yet to realise its full potential for influence in that part of the world and it should have some extra weight for all the money it is pouring in.”
The EU Observer says Ashton will push for a restart of peace talks:
Speaking in Northern Finland, where she is taking part in informal discussions with seven other foreign ministers, Ms Ashton said she “will make it clear …that we want to see the parties get back to talks.” “We know the solution lies in their negotiation: I believe the time is right to do that while things are quite calm comparatively.” (…)
Ms Ashton aims to appeal to Mr Netanyahu to use his domestic popularity to help start the talks. The relative calm of recent months is “the moment at which a leader has to display leadership by taking his people to the possibility of long-term calm and prosperity, and that can only be done by a settlement,” she said.
Reuters has some more quotes from Ashton:
“We’re a huge supplier of aid and development in that region. We are strong with Israel in terms of trade and Israel wants to enhance its relationship with us, it wants to upgrade relations,” she said when asked what leverage the EU could have in talks given that the United States has struggled to be heard.
“Our ambition is that they know — because they do — that the solution lies in a negotiated settlement. Our view is that it needs to happen quickly and now, with the opportunity that that affords Israel … to be able to enhance the relationships it wants with us in any event for the future.”
For EU background material on EU relations with Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, Palestinian Territories go here.
EU foreign ministers in “existential crisis” over diminished role after introduction of Lisbon rules, according to Finish foreign minister Alexander Stubb:
Stubb said that many foreign ministers were “very disappointed” they no longer participated in European Councils, the regular meetings of EU leaders. The treaty also stipulates that the high representative should chair meetings of EU foreign ministers instead of the foreign minister of the country that currently holds the rotating presidency of the EU.
But Stubb said that ministers had to accept the changes brought about by Lisbon. “Give the powers and prerogatives to Ashton and the External Action Service. Otherwise, you won’t have a European foreign policy,” he told European Voice.
Read today on Global Europe: In defence of European defence. EU missions are an indispensable part of international security. By Daniel Keohane, Senior Research Fellow at the European Union Institute for Security Studies.
To receive the Global Europe Morning Brief every weekday by email, send an email to globeurope@gmail.com