<blockquote>"
The European and the Mediterranean dreams are inseparable. Everyone is going to have to make an effort, as the Europeans did, to put an end to the deadly spiral of war and violence, that, century after century, periodically brought barbarity to the heart of civilization."
-- Sarkozy</blockquote>
Bold Mediterranean summit opens diplomatic doorsBy Steven Erlanger and Katrin Bennhold
Sunday, July 13, 2008
SourcePARIS: Leaders of 43 nations with nearly 800 million inhabitants inaugurated a new Union for the Mediterranean on Sunday, designed to bring the northern and southern countries that ring the sea closer together through practical projects dealing with the environment, climate, transportation, immigration and policing.
But the meeting was also an opportunity for President Nicolas Sarkozy of France to exercise some highly public Middle East diplomacy, bringing President Bashir al-Assad of Syria out of isolation for a controversial Elysée Palace meeting and hosting a session between Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel and the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas.
The Union for the Mediterranean is Sarkozy's brainchild, but his original conception was watered down to include all members of the European Union. Nor does the new union have any political conditions for membership, sharply reducing the possibility of influencing policy changes or promoting more respect for human rights among the governments represented here.
But the enlargement of the group to the north has made it easier for Sarkozy to include southern countries, including Syria and Israel, which remain in a formal state of war, and some, like Jordan, which are only notionally Mediterranean. And the group is disparate, including Turkey, Greece, Germany, Montenegro and Morocco. The union has northern and southern co-presidents - Sarkozy and President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt to start - and will create a permanent secretariat from north and south, though leaders still disagree about where.
The large gathering was a significant accomplishment for French diplomacy, with only Libya refusing to come and the kings of Morocco and Jordan pleading other engagements.
While initial accomplishments are likely to be vague, the meeting marked an end to the diplomatic isolation of Assad, who has been ostracized for his alliance with Iran, his support for Palestinian groups classified by the United States and the European Union as terrorist, and his country's alleged involvement in the 2005 assassination of Rafik Hariri, the former Lebanese prime minister.
Hariri was a close friend of the previous French president, Jacques Chirac, who bitterly condemned Sarkozy's playing host to Assad and refused to attend the ceremonies.
An invitation to Assad to watch the Bastille Day military parade Monday also has angered some in the French military, who have been deployed at times in Lebanon.
Syria also attended the American-led Middle East summit meeting last November in Annapolis, Maryland, but only sent its deputy foreign minister. Since then, however, Israel and Syria have opened serious but indirect peace talks via Turkish mediators, and Assad is eager to rejoin the world. Sarkozy offered him a private meeting and full honors, arguing, "How can you make peace if you don't talk to people with different opinions?"
But the invitation to Assad, like an earlier one to the Libyan leader, Muammar el-Qaddafi, has reignited domestic criticism of Sarkozy's apparent failure to live up to his avowed "moral foreign policy."
When elected, he chose a noted rights advocate, Bernard Kouchner, as his foreign minister and created a secretary of state for human rights.
The leader of the French opposition Socialists, François Hollande, said Assad's participation in the union was fine, "but his presence at the 14th of July is inappropriate - to have a dictator at a celebration of human rights hurts a number of sensibilities," he said, including those of the French military, whose soldiers will parade before Assad.
The French military is none too happy with Sarkozy right now in any case, because of his announced cuts in military personnel and his denunciation of commanders as "amateurs" after an accidental shooting of civilians at a barracks last month.
"This visit is, for me, a historic visit, an opening toward France and Europe," Assad told Le Figaro, the French daily.
On Saturday, Sarkozy claimed a success, with Assad and the new Lebanese president, Michel Suleiman, agreeing to open embassies in each other's countries for the first time. Sarkozy said the Assad agreement "to open diplomatic representation in Lebanon is historic progress."
But Assad was vague about recognizing Lebanon, which Syria has dominated for decades and considers a Syrian province.
Syria has so far refused to demarcate a border with Lebanon, and Assad said that before mutual recognition, both countries must "define the steps to take to arrive at this stage."
On Sunday, just before the union summit meeting began, Sarkozy hosted Abbas and Olmert for another of their regular meetings to try to negotiate the principles of a peace deal. The last meeting was in early June in Jerusalem, so the meeting in Paris was no breakthrough.
Still, both sides had positive things to say, with Olmert, under pressure to resign after further allegations of personal corruption, saying Israel and the Palestinians "have never been as close to the possibility of an accord as we are today."
Abbas praised Sarkozy as "a great and enduring friend of Palestine and Israel, making you the right man for this role of furthering the peace process."
Senior Israeli officials say that progress is being made in the talks with the Palestinians but that hard political decisions remain for them and Abbas. "It's getting close to crunch time," one official said, asking for anonymity under normal diplomatic practice.
Despite Olmert's problems, the Israelis insist that there is a national consensus supporting the peace effort, but that the Palestinians must give up on certain core principles, like the return of all of East Jerusalem, a complete return to 1967 boundaries and the right of all refugees from the 1948-49 conflict to return to original homes.
The Palestinians say that Israel must live up to its own promises, stopping settlement expansion, and agree to return to roughly 1967 lines.
The Israeli officials said that peace was possible with Syria, but that Assad would have to decide to finish the negotiations in direct talks.
Waiting for a new American president would be a mistake, the Israeli officials warned - because that would likely mean a new Israeli prime minister too, even if Olmert survives for the moment. On Sunday, the Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, met with both Olmert and Assad and reportedly carried a similar message between them.
The summit meeting itself was a talkathon around a huge oval table in the majestic, glass-roofed Grand Palais. Sarkozy greeted each representative as their limousines drove up. Inside, Olmert made the rounds, but as he approached Assad, the Syrian turned away to talk to his interpreter, according to a photographer there. Israel sat next to Italy and Greece; Syria between Slovakia and the Czech Republic.
Addressing the meeting, Mubarak said, "We are linked by a common destiny" and urged members to reduce the gap in wealth between north and south by working on "durable development."
Sarkozy spoke of partnership and urged the leaders toward peace, saying: "The European and the Mediterranean dreams are inseparable." He said that "everyone is going to have to make an effort, as the Europeans did, to put an end to the deadly spiral of war and violence, that, century after century, periodically brought barbarity to the heart of civilization."
The group spoke about a restricted number of topics Sunday, with speeches limited by the large numbers attending. A summit declaration proposes projects like solar energy, reducing pollution of the sea and student exchanges. Heads of state are supposed to meet every two years, and foreign ministers every year, and the Arab League, which wanted full membership, will instead be considered a "permanent guest."
The meeting was followed by a formal dinner at the Elysée, with seating at small tables carefully negotiated by French diplomats.
Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, who had insisted that the Sarkozy project include all European Union members and not just those bordering the Mediterranean, said pointedly that the meeting "was a very, very good start for a new phase in the cooperation" between Europe and the south, a reference to the so-called Barcelona Process set up after the Oslo peace accords. The European Union in fact calls this: "Barcelona Process: Union for the Mediterranean.'
"The summit is a nice event, but will the Union find an independent life?" a senior diplomat from a southern country asked, noting that the Barcelona Process, like Oslo, had run out of gas. "It would be a shame to have a second version of the Barcelona process," the diplomat said. "Sarkozy's original idea was bold, but there's not much of it left."
Copyright © 2008 The International Herald Tribune