PARIS: Spain aims to revive the Middle East peace process, working with France and Egypt in the run-up to a Mediterranean summit in Barcelona in June, the Spanish foreign minister said Saturday. We are talking to France and Egypt . to restart the peace process in the Middle East, Miguel Angel Moratinos said during a forum on the Mediterranean in Paris. Forty-three heads of state and government will gather on June 7 for the second summit of the Union for the Mediterranean, which was formed two years ago in Paris by Egypt and France. Israeli, Palestinian and Syrian leaders Benjamin Netanyahu, Mahmoud Abbas and Bashar Al-Assad respectively are among those expected to attend, Moratinos said. Spain, which holds the European Union rotating presidency through June, fixed two short-term objectives: facilitate the restart of negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis, overseen by the United States, and ensure success in Barcelona. We are working with France and Egypt for something important in Barcelona, Moratinos said. He also said the summit could lead to an economic agreement being reached between the European Union and Syria, the only non-European country on the Mediterranean that has not concluded an association of this kind with the EU. I think the conditions are there to finalize the agreement and sign it in Barcelona, Moratinos added. On Monday, the Spanish foreign minister is due to meet Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and Middle East envoy Tony Blair to discuss economic support for Abbas s Palestinian Authority. Our first immediate, urgent objective is that in one, two, three weeks, or a month, the talks start again , he said. He also stressed that Israeli settlement building in Palestinian-claimed territory must end. We have to do everything to stop (it). There has to be diplomatic and political pressure, Moratinos said. If not, even when politicians sit around a table to define the Palestinian state it will be impossible because there will not be the territorial conditions to define a viable Palestinian state. An advisor to French President Nicolas Sarkozy was more skeptical of the chances of success in getting the Mideast peace process back on track at the Barcelona summit. For it to work you need everyone to go and to want that, Henri Guaino said at the forum. Never has the situation in the Middle East been so blocked, never has the dialogue been such a dialogue of the deaf, he added.
