Malta seeks to encourage healthier EU-Arab dialogue

Malta is insisting with its European partners to put the dialogue between the European Union and the League of Arab States on a more formal and structured platform, ensuring a wider ranging engagement on the challenges that affect the region.

Foreign Minister Michael Frendo, who launched the idea at a Gymnich meeting in early September, has now written to Frank- Walter Steinmeier, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Federal Republic of Germany, which currently holds the Presidency of the European Union, underlining the importance of the initiative.

Dr Frendo said that this meeting would be an important statement to further the politics of moderation as opposed to the politics of extremism and divisiveness.

He believes it is particularly timely for the EU to engage even more effectively on the issues under discussion and further illustrate its leading role in international politics.

Malta feels that the EU needs to actively support moderate governments in the Arab world whose stability is increasingly threatened by extremists and fundamentalist elements which, in turn, also undermine the EU agenda with the Arab World at a time when the number of issues that demand effective dialogue and engagement is increasing, both in number and complexity.

Dr Frendo feels that the current practice of a meeting between the European Union Troika and the Arab League on the margins of the EuroMed Foreign Ministers' meeting may be insufficient to address these issues.

In the meantime, Dr Frendo informed the European Foreign Ministers of this initiative and sent them an aide memoire with the issues he would like to be discussed at such a meeting with the Arab League.

These issues include reform, moderation and the dialogue of cultures, energy, security and climate change, development, and the situation in the Middle East.

Malta, he said, would be happy to host such a meeting.