Donors lead Mideast development push
By Taieb Mahjoub
MOSCOW (AFP): The push to focus on economic development after the first multilateral Middle East peace talks in nearly four years came after pressure from donor nations, diplomats and analysts said here Wednesday.
"Donor countries, which fully understand the difficulties, don't want to delay the realization of these projects under study any longer," said a Western diplomat who asked not to be named.
The 12 countries participating in the two-day talks, which were headed by Russia and the United Stats and ended here Tuesday, revived four working groups to oversee regional economic development, the environment, Palestinian refugees and water issues.
Negotiators however failed to agree on relaunching a sensitive fifth group to oversee arms control and regional security after Egypt linked its revival with demands that Israel submit to international nuclear inspections.
"Economic development in the Middle East is not aimed only at boosting cooperation between Israel and the Arab countries but also within the Arab world itself, where trade has been limited," European expert Matthias Burchard told AFP.
Burchard, who said inter-Arab trade accounts for only 12 percent of the Arab world's foreign commerce, said the development committee already had a series of studies on the region's transport, tourism and trade in the works.
EU foreign policy and security chief Javier Solana said the follow-up committee should draw out a "clear road-map" so that donor nations and the people of the region knew what progress to expect before the next multilateral talks in Europe in July.
The Moscow meetings were the first since the multilateral track of the peace process stalled in mid-1996 when Israel elected a right-wing government under Benjamin Netanyahu.
According to the final statement of the summit released Wednesday, the European Union will head a regional economic development committee that will have permanent offices in Amman, where it will hold its first meeting in May.
The question of Palestinian refugees, one of the thorniest issues in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, will be on the agenda May 16-18 in Canada, which heads the working group on refugees.
The environmental group, headed by Japan, will meet May 31- June 1 in Tunis while the U.S.-led water issues group is set to meet in Oman from April 11-12.
U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and her Russian counterpart Igor Ivanov said in a joint statement Tuesday that the joint groups would "deepen mutual trust among the regional parties."
They also urged Syria and Lebanon, which boycotted the Moscow summit, to take part in future meetings, saying that "progress in negotiations on their bilateral tracks would contribute to this end."
Albright added: "It is important to create a favorable climate for bilateral talks."
Amid a new flare-up of fighting between Syria-backed Islamic guerrillas and Israeli troops in southern Lebanon on Monday in which three Israeli soldiers were killed, Albright called on Syria, Lebanon and Israel "to show maximum restraint."