EU aims to curb Iran’s grip on Middle East

The EU is to focus its diplomatic efforts in the Middle East on bringing Hamas and the Syrian government closer to the political mainstream and limiting Iran’s influence in the region.

Concerned by Iran’s growing influence, diplomats say that the new drive is a direct result of a re-assessment of the EU’s strategic interests in the Middle East in the wake of the war in Lebanon.

According to diplomats the three main strands of the new strategy are to break the ‘axis’ between Syria and Iran, to support the formation of a new Palestinian coalition government and to ensure Lebanese sovereignty.

Javier Solana, the EU’s foreign policy chief, is expected to visit the region shortly to work towards these goals, although no firm date has been set for his trip.

Solana’s officials said it was unlikely that the trip would take place before the United Nations general assembly begins in New York on 12 September.

In New York the so-called Quartet on the Middle East - the EU, UN, US and Russia - will meet, giving the EU an opportunity to win backing for its new approach among the international community.

Since an informal meeting of EU foreign ministers in Lappeenranta, Finland, last weekend, EU officials, including Solana, have already begun to press for Palestinians to forge a government of national unity, a subtle but significant change in EU policy.

The EU had previously refused to echo US calls for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to suspend the Hamas government.

Before the meeting in Lappeenranta the EU had focused instead on the need for Hamas to moderate its policies towards Israel, to renounce violence and to recognise previous Palestinian peace commitments.

But there has been little sign of success in the EU’s efforts to use its leverage as a major contributor to the Palestinian budget to win concessions from Hamas.

This week diplomats said that despite the creation of an international mechanism to stave off a humanitarian crisis in the absence of funds, the lack of EU budgetary assistance could be "creating a security threat greater than that found in Lebanon".

The EU is now keen to revive earlier proposals which would bring Hamas and Abbas’s Fatah movement together, allowing the EU to restart contacts with the Palestinian government.

A previous deal, brokered by Palestinian prisoners aimed at curbing the violence between the two factions, was scrapped after the kidnapping of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in June. Some suspect the kidnapping was orchestrated by those in Hamas’s leadership, particularly the party’s hard-line Syria-based leadership, to wreck the formation of a new government.

But officials warned that a government based on the prisoners’ proposal could still cause some problems. Concerns centred on the fact that such a government would not be acceptable to the US or Israel, according to diplomats.

While the prisoners’ document implicitly recognised Israel, it called for violence to be renounced only outside the occupied territories.

An equally difficult task for the EU will be to define how to break what one described as the ‘Syria-Iran axis’ which has seen Iran’s stature grow even among non-Shia Muslims in the region.

One diplomat closely involved in the issue said that engagement, including some kind of quid pro quo deal with Syria would be necessary.

That belief derives from the view that Syria’s close co-operation with Iran is based more on the country’s need for regional allies than on an ideological meeting of minds.

But at present there is little appetite among EU member states to adopt the long-since-penned EU-Syria association agreement, which would be a valuable prize for Damascus.

For now the EU appears willing to let the UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan pursue his public contacts with the Syrian government.

During the Quartet meeting and Solana’s visit to the region, the EU will also try to ensure the continuance of the temporary international mechanism. It is now fully up and running funding 625,000 Palestinians but its mandate runs out at the end of September.

The EU is expected to press - and win support from the Quartet - for the mechanism’s life to be extended until the end of the year.

Solana is also set to try to secure the engagement of the so-called moderate Arab states, including Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, as part of an attempt to address all of the political difficulties in the Middle East as a whole.

The EU is to focus its diplomatic efforts in the Middle East on bringing Hamas and the Syrian government closer to the political mainstream and limiting Iran’s influence in the region.