Arabs urge EU to end 'neutrality'

Israeli Foreign Minister Ben-Ami and his Arab counterparts came said violence had to stop

MARSEILLE, France -- Arab countries have urged European foreign ministers to condemn the latest killings, mainly of Palestinians, in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Arabs criticised the European Union for its perceived reticence during the past seven weeks of violence in which at least 227 lives have been lost in running street battles.

As uncertainty continues over who will be the next U.S. President and how Al Gore or George W. Bush will handle the volatile area, the Arabs are beginning to look to the EU to play more of a role.

During heated discussions at a dinner of EU and Mediterranean states in Marseille which lasted until Thursday morning, Arab countries told the EU to "stop being neutral."

Israel told the 27-nation Euromed group that the violence has to stop before it is prepared to pay its own "high price for peace," diplomats said.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Moussa said: "You cannot be neutral vis-a-vis an aggression against an occupied population by the occupier.

"The Europeans have heard the unanimous position of the Arab countries, those present and those absent, about the European role."

Palestinian Planning Minister Nabil Shaath said neutrality was not only unacceptable but "immoral."

Foreign ministers from Israel, Arab countries and the EU laid out their positions on the collapsing Middle East peace process in discussions that one diplomat described as forthright but constructive.

"It wasn't a fireside chat, but there was a dialogue," the diplomat said.

Syria and Lebanon boycotted the meeting over Israel's participation and what they see as the EU's silence on the killings.

Moussa added: "We share their anger, but we are here to express that anger."

Shaath said the EU had to play a more muscular role in Middle East diplomacy at a time of uncertainty following last week's so far inconclusive presidential election in the U.S., the chief peace broker.

"No one knows who the new president will be and it will take him six months to find out what 242 is," Shaath said in a reference to a long-standing U.N. resolution that calls on Israel to withdraw from occupied Arab land.

Diplomats said Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami had accused Palestinian President Yasser Arafat of being either unable, or unwilling, to halt the uprising under way among his people for an independent state.

"He said Israel was ready to pay a very high price for peace, but that the violence must stop. He said a Palestinian state can't be born from violence," one diplomat quoted Ben-Ami as saying.

France, which holds the EU's rotating presidency, went ahead with the two-day meeting despite calls from some Arab states to postpone it.

French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine said the Euromed partnership, launched five years ago amid the optimism spawned by the Israeli-Palestinian Oslo interim peace accords, was important enough in itself to have to survive the present crisis.

Ministers are due on Thursday to discuss arrangements for a new EU economic aid programme worth 5.35 billion euros ($4.6 billion) to southern and eastern Mediterranean states over the period 2000 to 2006.

They were to look at ways to ensure that the funds, intended to help countries in the volatile Mediterranean basin develop market-oriented economies and stable democracies, would be taken up.

Only 26 percent of the EU aid package of 3.4 billion euros ($2.9 billion) to Mediterranean states for 1995-1999 has been disbursed because of bureaucratic obstacles.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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