MIDDLE EAST: The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Cowen, said in New York yesterday that anything less that a full withdrawal of Israeli settlements from Gaza would undermine the road map to Middle East peace, writes Conor O'Clery, North America Editor, in New York
Mr Cowen represented the EU presidency at the meeting of the Middle East "Quartet" at the UN, which was attended by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, US Secretary of State Colin Powell, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana.
"There had been suggestions that there was no longer a road map, but the US had committed itself to it," Mr Cowen said, referring to reports that the road map had been shredded by the US-backed Israeli initiative to withdraw from Gaza and to make some West Bank settlements permanent.
"What we want to do now is see can we utilise the unilateral initiative of the Israelis as a means of reactivating the road map," he told The Irish Times. "We want to see a full withdrawal, we want to see a monitoring and oversight mechanism."
Asked about the possibility of an incomplete withdrawal of settlements from Gaza following Mr Sharon's defeat by his Likud Party, Mr Cowen said: "We are making it clear that we would need to see the initiative as communicated to President Bush implemented in full in the context and in the way that we are suggesting for it to make the contribution that we think it has the potential to make." It was an evolving situation, he said. "There seemed to be a lot of certainty about things a few weeks ago; now we're finding we don't have a time scale for withdrawal stated by the Israelis.
"The quartet meeting re-emphasised, in the way that we want to see, that we are still talking about the road map, that the road map is the only means to a permanent solution and that we want to use the prospects of an initiative from America now to be consistent with the road map", Mr Cowen added.
The welcome that was given to the initiative by Washington was on the basis of a full withdrawal from Gaza, he said. Anything less "doesn't have the same potential to contribute to the road map."