CAIRO: Egypt said on Monday that the holding of a Mediterranean Union summit, scheduled for November in Barcelona, depends on the progress of stalled peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.
"The holding of the summit hinges on realizing a breakthrough in the direct Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations," Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit told reporters after a meeting with EU Commissioner for Enlargement and Neighborhood Policy Stefan Fule.
He said the meeting was "not postponed" but "there was no fixed date because we are waiting to see the development of the negotiations."
The second summit of the Union for the Mediterranean, initially scheduled to take place on June 7 in Barcelona, was postponed to November to give peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians a chance to produce results.
The latest round of peace talks was relaunched in September in Washington but ground to a halt when a 10-month partial moratorium on Israeli settlement building on occupied land expired on Sept. 26.
The 43-nation Union for the Mediterranean was established in 2008 in Paris by France and Egypt in a bid to foster cooperation in one of the world’s most volatile regions.
Egypt and France co-chair the Mediterranean Union, while Spain hosts the group’s headquarters and currently holds the European Union presidency.
