AMMAN, 30 August 2004 — German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, labeling Europe and Middle East countries as “direct neighbors”, insisted yesterday on a European Union role alongside the United States while working out any settlement between Israel and the Palestinians.
“I don’t believe this can be done alone by the United States, because we are direct neighbors… and developments there will affect our security,” Fischer told a press conference he jointly addressed with Jordanian Foreign Minister Marwan Muasher.
“The EU sticks to the road map and the relevant Security Council resolutions and we think the region needs a fair compromise solution based on two states,” he said.
Fischer pointed out that he discussed with Muasher the Israeli plan envisaging a unilateral pullout from the Gaza strip and said the Europeans were “ready to engage themselves in a constructive way” in efforts aimed at moving forward the Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations provided that the Gaza withdrawal was “done in the proper way”.
He referred to the long-held European viewpoint that the Gaza pullout should lead to the evacuation of the rest of occupied Palestinian territories.
Fischer said that his country and other EU member states still held “different views” with the United States over the situation in Iraq, but added that Europeans “are ready to support fully the implementation” of the latest Security Council resolution that endorsed the agreement worked by the UN Secretary-General’s envoy Lakhdar Brahimi at the end of June.
The accord reached with political leaders representing Iraq’s political mosaic, provided for the creation of the present interim government and the arrangement of general elections in January. The German foreign minister said that Germany and other EU countries would help in “training Iraqi police and military contribute to Iraq’s reconstruction on large scale”.
Asked to respond to the Lebanese government’s approval of a constitution amendment that allows President Elias Hrawi to run for another three-year term, Fischer said the EU countries “fully support sovereign and democratic Lebanon”.
On his part, the Jordanian foreign minister said that he had conducted “very healthy dialogue” with his German counterpart. He pointed out that his discussions with Fischer covered latest developments in the Palestinian territories and Iraq as well as the EU-backed political, economic and social reforms in the Arab world.
Fischer arrived in Amman Saturday in the course of a Middle East tour.
Fischer also said he would discuss the “disengagement plan” to remove all 8,000 Jewish settlers from Gaza, where they live in fortified enclaves among 1.3 million Palestinians, with Israeli leaders in Jerusalem today.
Palestinians fear the Gaza pullout will deny them a viable state in the West Bank and Gaza because Israel has made clear it will hold on to parts of the West Bank in return — an intention backed by US President George W. Bush.
“We have come to the conclusion that the unilateral withdrawal and the complete dismantling of settlements in Gaza, if it’s done in a proper way and part of the roadmap, it could be a real breakthrough to the peace process,” Fischer told reporters.
Under the Gaza plan, four of the 120 settlements in the West Bank — home to about 240,000 settlers — would also go by next year. But Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon intends to hold on to an arc of larger enclaves there.
Israel seized the West Bank and Gaza in the 1967 Middle East war. The international community sees Jewish settlements built on those territories as illegal, which Israel disputes.
