ABU DHABI, 22 June 2004 — UAE Crown Prince Sheikh Khalifa ibn Zayed Al-Nahyan held talks here yesterday with German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer to try to boost economic ties, the official WAM news agency reported.

The two men discussed “the means to develop (bilateral cooperation) notably in the economic, trade and investments fields,” the agency said. They also reviewed the situation in Iraq and the Israel-Palestinian conflict with Khalifa urging the implementation of the “road map” for peace, WAM added.

Fischer called on Iraq’s neighbors to play a greater role in bringing peace to the region. On the first day of his tour of the Gulf region, Fischer said reform-orientated polities such as those pursued by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) can help achieve Iraqi stability and prevent violence.

“No one can have an interest in an Iraqi civil war,” he said, adding that the most important factors for stability in Iraq were the transfer of power from the US-led occupation and elections.

Fischer named German-Emirates cooperation in the training of Iraqi police a positive example of common efforts at stability between Europe and Arab countries.

“We must have very close cooperation in the fight against terrorism,” he said, adding that the security of nearby Europe was dependent on the security of the Arab world.

Abu Dhabi’s Foreign Ministry Secretary Abdullah Rashid in return voiced the UAE support for a permanent seat for Germany on the United Nations Security Council, saying Germany should again take up its “natural role” in international relations.

Abu Dhabi was however not very responsive to Fischer’s support for the Western initiative about democracy in the Middle East. “Democracy and human rights cannot be forced from outside,” said Rashid.

Fischer said the initiative for the Middle and Near East should be a true partnership, for which Europeans were well-positioned. The German minister said he realized that there was mistrust that reforms “would be engrafted from outside”, but pointed to the political and economic development in the Gulf states as an example that there was a positive way for globalization in the Arab world.

In his visit to Abu Dhabi, Fischer also met with Sheikh Hamdan, Abu Dhabi’s vice premier in charge of foreign policy.