Paris, 4 December 2007 – The Assembly said on Tuesday that it was in favour of stepping up peacekeeping missions in the Middle East, in particular with the launch of a new autonomous civil-military operation in the Palestinian Territories.

Submitting a report on Europe and peacekeeping missions in the Middle East on behalf of the Defence Committee, Mr Dario Rivolta (Italy, Federated Group) felt that the recent Annapolis meeting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was “a very important new development that gave the opportunity to again express loudly and clearly the will to explore, in the coming year, all the possibilities for peace”. Recalling that Javier Solana, High Representative for the CFSP and Secretary-General of WEU, had said that the European Union was ready to take up the fresh momentum generated by Annapolis, the Assembly recommended “launching an autonomous civil-military security assistance operation in the Palestinian Territories to support and strengthen the Palestinian Authority”.

The Assembly also welcomed the major participation of European national forces in the UNIFIL II mission being deployed under UN command in Lebanon. Pointing out the “progress achieved” towards a negotiated settlement of the institutional crisis in Lebanon, Mr Rivolta felt that the “presence of UNIFIL II” had contributed significantly to the fact that the situation had not “deteriorated further”. The Assembly did however regret that lack of political unity among the European member states in 2006 had prevented the European Union from “conducting an autonomous military mission alongside UNIFIL as had been the case in the Democratic Republic of the Congo”.

The Assembly recommended better coordination of “national policies with respect to Lebanon and the Palestinian Territories in order to strengthen the role of the European Union” in the efforts to resolve these crises. It would also like to see “a more even balance in the European countries’ involvement in military crisis-management missions in the Middle East and other regions, so as to avoid certain countries being more exposed than others”. On the operational level, the Assembly once again emphasised the urgent need to harmonise the rules of engagement. “It is absurd to have troops on the same ground with widely differing rules of engagement”. Mr Rivolta stressed that this “seriously undermines the effectiveness of military operations”.