PARIS, Feb 20: With five weeks remaining before the Arab League summit to be held in Beirut (March 27-28), European proponents of a joint EU peace plan for Palestine — built around proposals recently made by French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine — express increasing disenchantment over the true chances of a common European plan ever seeing the light of day.

Unexpected interference in elaboration of the plan by Washington, also by Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, has now resulted in several countries saying they’d rather sit back and wait before pronouncing themselves on a joint European plan.

The plan in question, which took as its point of departure proposals made last month by Vedrine, was recently further developed at an informal meeting held in Caceres, Spain.

According to the plan as enunciated by Vedrine, the EU would propose that general elections be held in the occupied territories, while the existence of a Palestinian state would be recognized as early as possible, in any case before its geographical borders are determined. The idea behind the plan, said Vedrine, would be to “provoke a psychological shock, relaunch the peace process, indeed justify the end of the second Intifada.”

Although at Caceres the new plan hammered out under the aegis of Spanish authorities seemed at the time to have the support of all of the European states present, three of the original supporters of the plan — the United Kingdom, Netherlands and Germany — now say they’re not all that much in accord with the Spanish-brokered EU peace proposals.

One of the culprits behind the surprise decision by London, Amsterdam and Berlin, to dissociate themselves (the word used by a French diplomat is: desolidariser) from the plan, according to French and Spanish sources, is the United States, which very subtly has been pressuring those countries whose positions in the past have been more in line with those of Washington than with those of Paris — to take a wait-and-see stance in the matter.

Washington has let it be known too that it wants for any plan to incorporate important provisions of proposals made by George Mitchell, the former US Senator, and by George Tenet, director of the CIA.

Other sources say that besides Washington, effective pressure against the EU plan has come from the Palestinian authorities themselves, who all the while characterizing the propositions as “interesting,” to use the expression of Yasser Arafat, have not shown much enthusiasm to undertake any serious discussion of the proposal.

Javier Solana, the EU’s high representative for foreign relations, is presently in the Middle East, attempting to sell the EU plan nevertheless, but given the defection by Berlin, Amsterdam and London, his chances at getting anywhere now seem quite limited.

As for Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, his position in the matter, is that he finds it difficult supporting a plan that not only seems to have a slightly pro-Palestinian stance, but also has not yet obtained Washington’s explicit support.

“I ask my European friends,” he says in the interview, “to be neither pro-Israel nor pro-Palestine, but simply partisans of peace.” He adds that “as a general rule, moreover, any division between the United States and the European Union is dangerous and counter-productive for peace.”

Recognizing nevertheless that the autonomy presently accorded to the Palestinians is “insufficient”, he himself proposes a plan which foresees the recognition of a Palestinian state in the zones presently controlled by the Palestinian authority, that is, 80 per cent of the Gaza strip, and 42 per cent of the West Bank, and says that this recognition could serve as the point of departure for negotiations.

As for Israeli public opinion on the subject, Peres notes that “I need a bit more time to built and enlarge a consensus on my initiative. A poll indicates that 49 per cent of the Israelis are favourable to the plan, with 43 per cent opposed. There isn’t yet a large majority, but I have the feeling that public opinion (in Israel) is beginning to change.”