Lisbon - The Middle East conflict continues to hinder better cooperation between the
European Union and its
Mediterranean neighbours, officials in Lisbon said Tuesday. "The Euro-Mediterranean partnership has not yet fulfilled its entire potential. We have not been able to go as far as we would like, largely because of the running sore of the Middle East conflict," said Benita Ferrero-Waldner, the EU commissioner in charge of the bloc's external relations and neighbourhood policy.
Ferrero-Waldner was addressing a meeting in the Portuguese capital attended by foreign ministers from about 40 countries - the EU's 27 plus a number of non-member states with borders on the Mediterranean Sea. Among them Israel,
Syria and the Palestinian territories.
The EU has been trying to forge closer economic, social and cultural ties with its southern neighbours since 1995, when it set up a Euro-Mediterranean Partnership at a meeting in Barcelona, Spain.
This year alone, the EU committed 725 million euros (just over 1 billion dollars) of European tax money to fund 30 new projects in North Africa and the Middle East.
Yet its officials acknowledge that the so-called "Barcelona Process" has obtained only limited success, in part due to mutual mistrust between the Israelis and the Palestinians and among many of its Arabic members.
"There is a general feeling of frustration about the
Barcelona process," the meeting's host, Portuguese Foreign Minister Luis Amado, told reporters in Lisbon.
Its ambitious aim of creating a Euro-Mediterranean Free Trade Area covering more than 740 million customers by 2010, for instance, is unlikely to be achieved on time. And other agreements, such as a Code of Conduct on Countering Terrorism, have yet to be implemented.
Most of the discussions that took place on Monday and Tuesday in Lisbon centred on the core problem afflicting such a partnership: the Middle East conflict.
Ministers were able to exchange their views on the issue with their Israeli colleague, Tzipi Livni, and with her Palestinian counterpart, Riad Malki.
And some of them sounded upbeat about the prospect of peace in the region, which is to be discussed in a US-sponsored conference scheduled for late November in Annapolis, Maryland.
"It has been many years since we were this close from unblocking the process in the direction of peace," Italian Foreign Minister Massimo D'Alema said after holding separate talks with Livni and Malki.
"There is a momentum now in place and a will (to achieve peace) on both sides. This is a break from the past," said Amado.
The EU's
foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, said the Barcelona process could act as "a catalyst for peace" in the Middle East, noting that the EU-Mediterranean partnership is the only international forum in which Israelis and Palestinians come together to discuss regional issues.
But the meeting in Lisbon left most questions about a French proposal for a Mediterranean Union unanswered.
Such a union, modelled on the EU and open to some 20 countries bordering the Mediterranean, has been conceived by French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
But contrary to expectations his foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, did not elaborate on the plan during a working dinner with his colleagues Monday. Kouchner left Lisbon immediately after the dinner.
