Today's Date:

Statements made by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Spokesperson

It was due to be taken up in Brussels by President Chirac, at the European Council. It’s a bit difficult for me to say exactly what’s going to emerge as the European Council is just ending now and the president will be holding a press conference.

Like you I saw the article in Le Figaro and I don’t want to go into the details of what it said. What’s important for us, and we repeated this at the EU foreign ministers council, the general affairs/external relations council, is that we’d like to see support for rallying the Palestinians in a national unity government which takes on board the principles defined by the Quartet. We consider the Mecca agreement, as we said, a step in the right direction.

We consider the EU needs to think what its attitude is going to be vis-à-vis this new government. We’d like to see the European Union take into consideration all these elements from the outset both in contacts with the Palestinian government and European aid. Later, things might evolve depending on what the new government’s actions are.

But once again, I don’t wish to go into details about what it says in this article in Le Figaro, or about the arrangements for possible contacts or a resumption of aid.

It’s a little too soon to say. What we’d like, and this is the political message that President Chirac delivered to his European colleagues, and the same message that Catherine Colonna gave the EU foreign ministers Monday, is to encourage the present dynamic. There’s been the Mecca agreement, we considered this a step in the right direction. Once again, we’re not renouncing the Quartet’s principles and we want them taken into account by the future national unity government.

We’d like the EU to be in a position to show support right from the start. Now, I can’t say today exactly how this will be done. It’s something that has to be discussed with our EU partners.

Let’s remember the national unity government hasn’t yet been formed.

The American report is one that is prepared each year by the State Department and is the result of information from US diplomatic and consular posts. It’s a report for the US. It’s not specifically my place to comment on it.

There are also other places where human rights are discussed, beginning with the United Nations, the Human Rights Council, which I mentioned earlier, which is meeting in ministerial session next week.

As regards the specific question of Israeli conduct in the Palestinian Territories, I believe it is a subject which the UN has already issued statements on, on which positions have already been taken in the Human Rights Council.

What we would like is to see an objective report prepared, given that in certain cases there are human rights violations. These must be described and condemned, with everything done as objectively as possible and by listening also to any potential arguments advanced by the parties involved.

It is difficult for me to describe the situation. We know the situation, there’s an occupation, which leads to certain consequences which are well known. The state of occupation obviously leads in some cases to human rights violations, which is why it’s important to move towards a political solution.

What’s important in our view is to try to arrive at a common assessment of the situation which is as objective as possible.