Saturday, March 05, 2011

EU chief diplomat Catherine Ashton has left the job of special envoy to the Middle East vacant while she decides whether to scrap the post, a decision that disappointed the Palestinians Friday.

In another development, Hamas forces arrested a top commander of an Al-Qaeda-linked group in Gaza this week, sources close to the enclave’s Islamist rulers said Friday.
Hesham al-Sa’eedni was arrested Monday. He is believed to be an Egyptian citizen and a senior member of the Tawheed and Jihad group linked to Al-Qaeda, the sources said.

Israeli daily Haaretz reported Thursday that Sa’eedni’s group was involved in a series of attacks in Egypt’s Sinai peninsula, among them a 2006 attack on a hotel that killed 19 people.
The move by Ashton comes at a sensitive time when the international community is trying to persuade Israelis and Palestinians to resume talks, which broke down late last year over Jewish settlement construction in the occupied West Bank.

Belgian diplomat Marc Otte, who held the post since 2003, was not replaced after his term ended this week.
Ashton’s spokeswoman, Maja Kocijancic, said the EU was taking time to decide on the position because the bloc is overhauling its diplomacy with the nascent European External Action Service taking shape this year.
“It is an organizational issue,” Kocijancic said.
“It is not a change in policy.”
A diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, said it would probably be several months before Ashton decides whether to name a new envoy.

“A final decision will be taken at a later time, probably in the fall,” the diplomat told AFP.
Ashton, who heads the new EU diplomatic corps, is reviewing the bloc’s network of special envoys and representatives in order to determine their usefulness.

The EU’s foreign and security policy chief has made her personal involvement in the diplomatic efforts in the Middle East a priority and prefers to take the dossier in her own hands, another diplomat said.
The English baroness is close to the special envoy of the diplomatic Quartet in the Middle East, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, her political mentor in the Labor Party.

Ashton has given one of her top advisers for political affairs, Germany’s Helga Schmid, the task of following Otte’s dossier.
A top Palestinian negotiator, Nabil Shaath, said he hoped the EU would provide an explanation for its decision.
“We need a special EU independent representative for the peace process and we need the EU’s own peace project,” Shaath said.

Meanwhile, Chilean President Sebastian Pinera said Friday his country’s recognition in January of a Palestinian state was aimed at helping end the Middle East conflict.
Speaking to reporters on the Mount of Olives in occupied East Jerusalem, Pinera said Chile wanted to help the two sides work toward a peace agreement that would see both living within their own states with internationally recognized borders.

Chile’s recognition of an independent Palestinian state was a way of “contributing so that peace talks between Israel and Palestine will lead to an agreement which allows for the existence of two states,” he said.
Pinera, who arrived Thursday evening, was to travel to the West Bank city of Ramallah Saturday for talks with his Palestinian counterpart Mahmoud Abbas which were expected to focus on the moribund peace process. – Agencies