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| Abbas, left, and Olmert, right, have signalled moves towards peace while in Paris [AFP] |
Leaders from more than 40 nations are meeting in Paris for the inauguration of the Union for the Mediterranean, a new union which aims to promote closer ties between member countries on issues such as business, economics and education.
At the launch of the union, Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, said that prospects for a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians have never been stronger.
But Marwan Bishara, Al Jazeera's senior political analyst, speaking outside the summit, said that a lasting peace deal in the Middle East can be effective only with American support.
"There has been a history of people shaking hands at summits; we have seen it today with Olmert, Abbas and Sarkozy. We have seen it for 15 years and it seems the more people shake hands, the worse it gets in the occupied territories.
"I think it is clear that the French have been trying for a while to be involved in efforts towards a Middle East peace deal, but they know their limitations and they know that this summit is only a prelude for negotiations to go ahead whenever Washington is ready to sponsor such negotiations.
"With a Syrian president being here in Paris, it is a move forward, but since the Mitterand years in the 1980s it has been clear that Arab leaders would make their passage through Paris before they would ever make it to Washington.
"I think the French president is playing the role of a catalyst. Certainly while there is such a strategic and diplomatic void in the Middle East, it is clear that Qatar succeeded in bringing the Lebanese together. France is now building on the Qatari success in order to bring the Syrians, the Lebanese and the Israelis to the table.
"Syrian president Bashar al-Assad said on Saturday that he only expects American guarantees when it comes to peace with Israel. I think the Syrians do not trust the Israelis in any bilateral agreements. Israel is America's foremost ally in the region and would not bypass Washington when it comes to any lasting diplomatic arrangements in the region.
Lebanese deal
"It seemed that in May, when the Lebanese situation developed in such a way that Hezbollah took control of Beirut before an agreement between rival parities was eventually reached in Doha, that Syria and Iran played positive roles in those neogotiations. Who was not involved? The French and the Americans. Now there is movement between Lebanese president Michel Sleiman and al-Assad to pave the way towards diplomatic relations between the two countries.
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| The new union comes after tensions between Merkel and Sarkozy, right [AFP] |
"Syria has been brought in because, as Sarkozy admitted today, it has a role to play in the Middle East. It is going to be very difficult to move anything forwards in the region without involving Damascus.
"But Syria says there will not be any positive moves in the region unless Iran is involved. Hence, we go back to the Iraq Study Group which said a couple of years ago that you would have to bring Syria and Iran into the diplomatic process instead of launching wars.
"Everything that we have seen here, including Sarkozy's loud words, in fact reflect a reality that is far more modest. It seems that the compromise between him and the German chancellor Angela Merkel is that the European Commission for Mediterranean Affairs is going to be in charge of this new union. France, for the time being, is only playing the host.
"This idea of a Mediterranean club began with Sarkozy hoping for a European-African union. That was then brought down to a Mediterranean union – but that would not work. Hence, there was a compromise between the Germans and the French that this would be a union for the Meditteranean. This was not an Arab-Turkish-European compromise.
"The Germans said 'we are not going to finance anything that is not going to involve the northern European countries'. Sarkozy wanted to replace the 1995 Barcelona process (which aimed at promoting dialogue between European and Mediterranean nations) with this new union, but now he admits that because of Spanish, Italian and German pressure this union will actually be a continuation of the Barcelona process.
"On the other side, detractors in Turkey say this union is only to avoid Ankara becoming a member of the EU. In the south, detractors are saying that France is only doing all this to have the Arabs collaborate on combating terrorism and illegal immigration, in exchange for assistance with their own development."
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