BRUSSELS: Europe stands ready to help open crossing points for goods to Gaza, EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton said Friday ahead of a visit to the Palestinian territory.
Ashton begins a three-day trip to the Middle East on Saturday during which she will meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, US Middle East envoy George Mitchell and international envoy Tony Blair.
She makes her second visit to the Gaza Strip in four months on Sunday after Israel pledged to ease its blockade of the Hamas-run territory following an Israeli raid on an aid flotilla that left nine Turkish activists dead.
"The European Union has been calling for an urgent and fundamental change of policy regarding the closure of Gaza which can lead to a durable solution to the situation," Ashton said in a statement.
"We have welcomed the announcements made by Israel following the flotilla incident and are now awaiting their implementation," she said.
"We stand ready to support the opening of the Gaza crossings for the traffic of goods to and from Gaza."
Europe hopes to reactivate its customs mission for the surveillance of the Rafah crossing, which was created in 2005 but suspended since June 2007 after the Islamist militant group Hamas took control of Gaza.
Ashton has no plans to meet with any officials from Hamas, which is on US and EU lists of terrorist organizations.
Her visit comes ahead of a separate trip planned later in July by the foreign ministers of Italy, Spain, German, Britain and France, which raised eyebrows in Ashton’s entourage.
The British baroness was named last year as the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs, a new position that was created to give the 27-nation EU a single voice on the world stage.
The parallel visits to Gaza cause "a bit of disorder" in attempts to have a coherent EU approach, a European diplomat said, complaining that the ministers were sowing confusion with their trip.
Another diplomat said the separate trips gave a bad impression but that "there is room for everybody."
In Gaza, Ashton will visit a summer camp and a school run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNWRA).
She will also visit local businesses co-financed by the EU through its private sector reconstruction program in Gaza.
Ashton will meet Netanyahu, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and Defence Minister Ehud Barak on Sunday. She visits Palestinian Authority leaders on Monday.
Following its May 31 raid on the Gaza-bound aid flotilla, which sparked an international outcry, Israel agreed to ease its four-year-old land blockade of the impoverished territory.
Israel says it now blocks only weapons and other goods which could be of military use to the Islamist Hamas movement which controls the Palestinian territory.
However, it insists that its naval blockade will remain in place to prevent Palestinian armed groups from bringing in weapons by sea.
Europeans want Israel to increase the number of crossing points, the resumption of exports from Gaza and the easing of restrictions on the movement of people to and from the territory.
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