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World Jewish News
EU presses Egypt to take action against Gaza arms smuggling
25.01.2009
European Union foreign ministers pressed Egypt on Sunday to do more to prevent weapons from being smuggled to Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip - a problem undermining efforts to cement a durable truce in the Middle East.
The EU's 27 foreign ministers sought support from their Jordanian and Turkish counterparts in talks meant to help create a lasting cease-fire following Israel's 22-day offensive. The Israeli assault meant to crush Hamas rocket squads ended January 17 with an estimated 1,300 Palestinians dead.
The critical question facing the EU is whether Hamas will go along with any peace initiative - and what incentives might be offered to Egypt to deter arms smuggling along its porous Gaza border.
"We know the cease-fire is very fragile," British Foreign Secretary David
Miliband said. "Action is required to prevent the illegal trafficking of arms into Gaza. It's required to address the terrible humanitarian situation in Gaza, including the opening of [border] crossings."
Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt said the EU could send more monitors to help police Egypt's several official border crossings with Gaza.
"The key thing is to open up access to Gaza, so that the people of Gaza have the right not only to survive, but to live," Bildt said.
The ministers also pushed the Palestinian Authority, who was represented at the talks by Riad Malki, to pursue reconciliation with their Hamas rivals and to forge a unity government that could more effectively pursue peace talks with Israel. The Palestinian Authority controls only the West Bank.
Hamas leaders insist on having a lead role in operating the border crossings because their fundamentalist Islamic group won the Palestinian elections in 2006. But the EU and the United States have branded Hamas a terrorist organization, and recognizing the group's right to govern Gaza alone would be unacceptable.
The EU is eager to offer monitors, ships and radar equipment to help secure Gaza's border with Egypt, which is compromised by smugglers' tunnels.
Last week Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni met EU foreign ministers and agreed that Israel should allow more humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip. But Egypt has largely shut its side of the Gaza border since 2007 in opposition to Hamas' bloody rise to power.
International aid groups and the United Nations say the priority is to make sure more aid can get into Gaza to provide relief and reconstruction aid for the 1.4 million people living there.
Sunday's talks in Brussels coincided with negotiations in Cairo between Hamas leaders and the Egyptian government.
The EU already has observers on standby in the region and is ready to send monitors back to Rafah, Egypt's most strategic crossing point into Gaza, if the current cease-fire is maintained. An EU monitoring mission at Rafah operated sporadically from 2005 to 2007.
Egypt urges EU to offer fast aid to Gaza
Egypt, meanwhile, urged Europe on Sunday to help with fast reconstruction aid for the Gaza Strip and to put pressure on Israel to quickly reopen border crossings.
Israel has said it would allow in food, medicine and other essentials to the sector but ruled out a full reopening of borders for now.
"I ask the European Union to do [things] very, very quickly to rebuild to help the Palestinians to get out of this crisis," Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit said before talks with European and Palestinian counterparts.
"We need to force the Israelis to negotiate and also tell them to open crossings and to give Palestinians a chance to live in a normal way," he told reporters.
EU calls for Palestinian unity government
The EU has said it is ready to reactivate and expand a mission launched in 2005 to monitor the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt, but says agreement on that is hampered by the split between Hamas and President Mahmoud Abbas's rival Fatah, which lost control of Gaza to Hamas amid fighting in 2007.
"The reunification of the Palestinians under the recognized and cherished voice of President Abbas is so important," said British Foreign Secretary Miliband.
Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn also called for a Palestinian national unity government.
"When this government of consensus does not come about, I do not know how we can get out of this vicious circle," he added of the repeated failure of efforts to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
European officials stress their scope for action is limited while Cairo refuses to have a foreign presence on its soil to monitor the Egyptian end of a network of tunnels bringing in supplies - including arms, according to Israel - to Gaza.
France is sending a naval mission to the region to pre-empt arms supplies coming into Gaza, and there are discussions among EU states about the possibility of a further maritime mission in the Red Sea.
Источник: Haaretz
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