EU pushes for revival of W Asia peace talks

LAPPEENRANTA, Finland, Sep 1 (Reuters) The European Union called for a revival of the West Asia peace process today and its foreign policy chief said the bloc would be willing to talk to a Palestinian unity government including Hamas members.

Foreign ministers from the 25 EU states met at a 17th century fortress seeking ways to leverage their growing military presence as peacekeepers in southern Lebanon to bring about regional talks.

''We have to find a way back to solutions in the main conflict between Israel and Palestine,'' German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier told reporters.

Several ministers said there was a need for the EU to persuade the United States to relaunch the 2003 ''road map'' to peace.

EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana told Reuters in an interview that Europe should seek new peace talks based on a return to Israel's 1967 borders except for agreed land swaps.

A national unity government that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas hopes to form between his Fatah movement and the Islamic militant Hamas movement would be a key step, he said.

''We are interested in talking to that unity government. Of course, in that government, there will be Hamas people,'' he told Reuters. The EU has officially avoided contacts with Hamas since it came to power this year, branding it a ''terrorist'' group.

The Israeli government was also coming to realise in the light of the Lebanon war that the platform of a partial unilateral withdrawal from some Palestinian areas on which it was elected would have to be changed, he said.

US ROLE URGED The EU and the United States should co-sponsor an international conference on the broader region to draw up a ''great compact for a new West Asia'', Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos told ministers.

''It's a time for Europe to awaken US leadership,'' he told Reuters.

Moratinos suggested mandating Solana to explore such a framework with the US and the two other members of the Quartet of West Asia peace brokers, Russia and the United Nations.

''We have to take an initiative, this is the moment, the time is ripe for the European Union to act decisively to approach the United States,'' the Netherlands' Bernard Bot told reporters.

Ireland's Dermot Ahern said there was a proposal to invite Abbas to the next regular EU foreign ministers' meeting on Sept. 15 to underscore the centrality of the Palestinian issue.

Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja of Finland, holder of the EU presidency, told reporters: ''We have to be ready to talk with all relevant parties, including Hamas and Syria.'' But he stressed Hamas must recognise Israel's right to exist as a precondition.

France continues to oppose an EU dialogue with Damascus due to Syria's alleged involvement in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri, a close friend of President Jacques Chirac, in 2004.

A return to its 1967 borders remains anathema to Israel, which has said it wants to keep major settlement blocks in the occupied West Bank under any deal. Solana said Israel's main ally, US President George W Bush, had said more than once that Israel had to end the occupation that started in 1967.

''We understand that of course with agreed swaps of territory,'' Solana said. ''But the starting point should be those borders and accepting those borders.'' REUTERS AB VV2050