- (AFP) -- The European Union called on Israel to stop
building a security fence along the West Bank warning it would only worsen
the plight of the Palestinians.
-
- In a statement issued at annual "association council"
talks with Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom, the EU also condemned
an Israeli ban on contacts with officials who hold talks with Palestinian
leader Yasser Arafat.
-
- Shalom meanwhile said Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon
was due soon to resume top-level contacts with the Palestinians by meeting
his counterpart Ahmed Qorei in the coming days.
-
- He said he had told US Secretary of State Colin Powell,
who was also visiting Brussels, the date of the meeting, but did not specify
it to reporters.
-
- "We think we are going to have this meeting. It
wasn't set up exactly but (it will be) in the next, coming week,"
he said after talks with Powell at a Brussels hotel.
-
- Qorei said Tuesday that the planned talks would be a
chance to "open a new chapter" in fraught relations between the
two sides.
-
- Official contacts have been frozen for nearly three months
amid continuing violence from the Palestinian uprising against Israeli
occupation.
-
- The EU said the security fence, which Israel says is
necessary to keep put suicide bombers, would undermine international efforts
to resolve the conflict by creating a Palestinian state living in peace
with its Jewish neighbour.
-
- "It would cause further humanitarian and economic
hardship to the Palestinians," the EU statement said.
-
- "Thousands of Palestinians west of the fence are
being cut off from essential services in the West Bank, Palestinians east
of the fence will lose access to land and water resources," it said.
-
- "Hence, the EU calls on Israel to stop and reverse
the construction of the so-called security fence inside the occupied Palestinian
territories..."
-
- The EU said the building and expansion of Jewish settlements
in the West Bank "inflames an already volatile solution", and
said there was "no alternative" to a peace plan backed by the
EU, the United States, the United Nations and Russia.
-
- The EU statement also stressed "the importance of
open and unhindered channels of communication for all EU interlocutors"
with Israeli leaders.
-
- The talks ban "is not in line with the spirit"
of the EU-Israel association dialogue, it added.
-
- Shalom said Monday that Israel had resumed contacts with
the EU's Middle East envoy, Marc Otte, whom it had snubbed for holding
talks with Arafat. Israel says the veteran Palestinian leader is the main
obstacle to peace.
-
- But EU officials said the resumption of contacts did
not yet extend to high-ranking representatives such as EU foreign policy
chief Javier Solana or External Relations Commissioner Chris Patten.
-
- The Brussels talks also covered trade issues, with the
EU expressing mounting frustration about a long-running dispute with Israel
over trade in goods made by Jewish settlers living on occupied Palestinian
land.
-
- The EU has since 1998 been pressing the Jewish state
to stop labelling produce made by the settlers as "made in Israel",
and has warned importers of orange juice and other goods that they face
punitive levies.
-
- "I think patience has been given new meaning by
the way that we've tried to deal with this issue," EU External Relations
Commissioner Chris Patten told reporters.
-
- "It doesn't affect a huge amount of our trade, but
it's an aggravation for everybody, it's an irritant," he said.
-
-
-
- Copyright © 2002 AFP. All rights reserved. All information
displayed in this section (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected
by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence
you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any
way commercially exploit any of the contents of this section without the
prior written consent of Agence France-Presses.
|
