Presidency Statement on the Middle East Peace Process

Following Discussion at the Informal Meeting of EU Foreign Ministers

Palermo, 9-10 March 1996

1. After the appalling bombings in Israel which have killed and injured so many innocent victims and which aim through blind violence to undermine the Peace Process, we re-affirm our solidarity and support for all efforts to establish durable peace in the region. This was the message that Mrs Agnelli took as President of the Council of the European Union during her visit to Israel and Gaza on 5 March.

2. Safeguarding the security of the Israeli and Palestinian populations is a fundamental element in implementing the Peace Process. In condemning the barbaric terrorist acts in Israel, we pay tribute to the courage of Mr Shimon Peres and acknowledge the need for tough measures to assure the safety of the Israeli population and to prevent further terrorist acts. We urge the Israeli and Palestinian authorities to cooperate closely to detain and punish those responsible.

3. While urging also on President Arafat the need as a matter of the highest priority and urgency to take every step within his power to arrest those responsible for terrorism, we recognize the hardship imposed on the Palestinian population resulting from the closure by Israel for security reasons of all land and sea borders with Gaza and the West Bank. We recall the essential role in building up support for the Peace Process in the Palestinian entity of the reconstruction assistance provided by the international community, almost half of which comes from the European Union. The complete closure of the borders is already threatening this essential import-dependent work and causing suffering through lack of food supplies to the Palestinian population. We therefore call on Israel to allow humanitarian assistance and materials for the internationally financed reconstruction programmes to go through, under appropriate security safeguards but without undue delay.

4. The Peace Process must be made irreversible. We give our complete support to Mr Shimon Peres, Mr Yasser Arafat and King Hussein. We urge them to pursue with determination the implementation of the Peace Process, and we call on Syria and Lebanon to associate themselves fully with it. We look to the continued implementation of the agreements concluded both with Jordan and the Palestinian Authority, including the agreed timetable. We attach importance also to the continued implementation of the multilateral track of the Peace Process, including REDWG.

5. We re-affirm our absolute condemnation of terrorism in all its forms, whatever the motivation and whoever the perpetrators. We urge the reinforcement, individually and collectively, of measures to prevent terrorist organisations from pursuing their activities, notably recruitment, supply of arms and other means of violent destruction and fund raising for criminal purposes. We call for international agreement on measures to bring to justice perpetrators of terrorist acts. At the same time, we urge all states, in accordance with their international obligations, not to support terrorism actively or passively, to condemn all acts of terrorism, to prevent terrorist organisations from using their territory and to cooperate together with the international community to banish this scourge.

6. In this connection we are deeply concerned at the absence of specific Iranian condemnation of the terrorist bombings in Israel and at the gap between Iranian assurances in the Critical Dialogue that they would do nothing against the Peace Process on the one hand and, on the other, other irresponsible declarations made in Iran about the bombings in Israel. We call on Iran to condemn once and for all all acts of terrorism, whoever by and for whatever end, and to respect its commitment to refrain from any action which could undermine the Peace Process or legitimise terrorism.

7. We also condemn Libyan reactions, whether the declarations of Colonel Qaddafi on 27 February after the bombings of Jerusalem and Ashkelon or the despatch from the official press agency JANA after the bombing of 3 March in Jerusalem, which referred to the death of sixty innocent civilians as "a form of self­defence and nothing else".

8. In follow-up to this approach agreed among the Foreign Ministers of the European Union:

- the EU will play a full and active role at the Sharm El-Sheikh Summit based on the common approach described above;

- Troika visits at political level will take place to countries in the region to impress on them the EU's views, notably those expressed above;

- The Troika visit to Iran will emphasize that if the Critical Dialogue is worth continuing, it must show some progress and convergence of views on such fundamental issues as the MEPP and terrorism;

- terrorism will also be a central point in the Troika visits in the region, including in Tripoli;

- the Troika will discuss the wider issues of the MEPP in all capitals visited;

- technical assistance to and training for the Palestinian police in their fight against terrorism will be examined as a matter of priority;

- the EU will make an urgent demarche in Israel to make possible the continuation of the EU's social and humanitarian actions in the territories and to allow humanitarian assistance and reconstruction material, under proper security safeguards but without undue delay, into Gaza and the West Bank.

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