Threat to punish Israel by research funding exclusion

Date: 07/01/1999

By Simon Taylor

EU GOVERNMENTS are threatening to cut Israel out of the Union's €15-billion science research programme as punishment for failing to abide by the commitments it made in last autumn's peace deal with the Palestinians.

Middle Eastern experts from EU governments are expected to confirm in the next few weeks that Jerusalem will be excluded from the Union's new research programme, due to run until 2002.

Diplomats say the move follows a meeting early last month at which there was no consensus for including Israel in the R&D programme, and recent signs that Jerusalem appears to be moving even further away from honouring the commitments it made to the Palestinians at the emergency meeting in Wye last October.

EU governments launched a strong attack on Israel just before Christmas, saying its stalling over the conditions agreed at Wye contravened both the spirit and the letter of the deal. They singled out in particular its failure to press ahead with plans to withdraw troops from parts of the West Bank.

But the move to bar Jerusalem from the research programme has been criticised by Miguel Moratinos, the EU's special envoy to the Middle East peace process.

Addressing a European Parliament committee this week, he said it would be “a great mistake” to block Israel's access to Union R&D funding. “Nobody would turn out to be a winner,” he said, warning that the move would damage the EU's chances of playing a constructive role in achieving a peace deal. “The Fifth Framework Programme would be an opportunity to show that we have nothing against Israel,” he added.

Israeli officials said excluding their country from the programme would undermine the Union's role in the peace process, arguing that the EU could not claim to be an honest broker between the two parties while taking such action against Jerusalem.

Israel was the only non-European country to take part in the previous EU research programme, because of its highly advanced scientific research community and the progress made towards a negotiated peace settlement in 1994.