Paris, 3 December – the WEU Assembly adopted a recommendation on Wednesday in which it called for an Israeli-Palestinian agreement that would “ensure compliance with the right of return of the Palestinian refugees”, while taking account of the need to find a pragmatic way of implementing this fundamental principle without destabilising the countries in the region.

This recommendation, which was addressed to the EU on the basis of a report submitted on behalf of the Political Committee by Mrs Josette Durrieu (France/Socialist), goes further than the Geneva Accord which, on the contrary, stipulates that the Palestinians will concede the full application of the right of return. Mrs Durrieu stated during the presentation of her report that this right was “a sacred principle”. Everyone has a right to the principle of return as well as the right to compensation”, she said.

Mrs Durrieu, who had recently returned from a visit to the capitals of the Middle East, expressed the view that neither Ariel Sharon nor Yasser Arafat were genuinely in favour of peace. Sharon, she said, certainly was not. At the very most he would accept an entity under Israeli government covering 40% of the West Bank, the famous  “bantustanisation of Palestine”. Regarding Arafat, whom she had met for the second time, she felt that this “old combatant would surely prefer to die fighting, rather than as a politician who had found, by dint of his determination, a peace compromise”. Mrs Durrieu nevertheless took the view that the Geneva Accord in particular offered new hope of a re-launch of the peace process with a view to countering the rise “of terrorism, Islamic fundamentalism, anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism” that was clearly visible in the region.

In a related report on the impact of the Iraq crisis on public opinion in Europe, Mrs Cristina Agudo Cadarso (Spain/Socialist) underlined the desire for a common European policy on major issues. 83% of the people questioned during a Eurobarometer survey conducted in the EU member states following the military operations in Iraq had said that there was a need to adopt a common position during an international crisis. In the Assembly’s view that development made it necessary to ensure that “citizens are regularly and fully informed about the various options proposed” in connection with the IGC “in particular for making the common security and defence institutions work properly”.