April 01, 2007	Sunday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 12, 1428

BREMEN, March 31: EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said on Saturday Arab countries planning to develop nuclear energy programmes must do so in keeping with a global pact aimed at stopping the spread of atomic weapons.

“Several countries in the Arab League – Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the Jordanians – they have decided to produce energy with nuclear processes,” Solana told reporters at the end of a two-day meeting of European Union foreign ministers.

“This is a very important decision. It is very important that it is done according to the non-proliferation treaty, according to the rules of the game,” he said.

Arms control experts estimate that Israel, which unlike its Arab neighbours never signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), has an arsenal of nuclear weapons.

Western nations suspect that another predominantly non-Arab country in the Middle East – Iran – is developing atomic weapons under cover of a civilian energy programme.

Tehran denies this allegation but hid sensitive parts of its nuclear programme from UN inspectors for nearly two decades in violation of the NPT.

EU agreement: European Union foreign ministers backed an Arab peace initiative on Saturday and agreed to engage with ministers of the new Palestinian national unity government who are not members of the Islamist Hamas movement.

They voiced full support for the Arab plan revived at a summit in Riyadh this week offering Israel peace and relations in exchange for a complete withdrawal from Arab land occupied in the 1967 Middle East war and a solution the Palestinian refugee problem.

“The international community should not lose that opportunity (for peace). We have already lost many opportunities,” Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos told reporters after the EU ministers discussed the Middle East.

“We have a pragmatic position to deal with all interlocutors that are not members of Hamas ... The finance minister, the interior minister and the foreign minister are not members of Hamas,” he said, at the meeting in Bremen, Germany.

The 27-nation EU boycotted the Hamas-led government formed last year because it refused to recognise Israel, renounce violence of accept past peace accords. The EU has pressed for a Palestinian unity government.

The government formed this month between President Mahmoud Abbas’ moderate nationalist Fatah party and Hamas agreed to respect past agreements but Hamas insisted it would not recognise the Jewish state or renounce armed resistance.

European External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner has invited Finance Minister Salam Fayyad, a respected independent technocrat, to Brussels on April 11 to discuss ways of channelling aid to the Palestinians.

“It is important that we prepare for the future, also on (the) financial question,” she said on Saturday.

But she has cautioned against expecting an overnight resumption of direct assistance, saying a temporary mechanism to distribute aid bypassing the government would have to remain in place for a while longer.

QUARTETS: EU officials said the ministers agreed the bloc would step up efforts in the Quartet of international mediators grouping the United States, the EU, Russia and the United Nations to revive peace efforts.

They would also press for cooperation with a newly-formed Arab Quartet formed by Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates.—Reuters