(Communicated by the Foreign Minister's Bureau)
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Avigdor Liberman is
going to Brussels on 23 July for a series of meetings with European foreign
ministers. He will also attend a meeting of the Israel-EU Association
Council.
FM Liberman will meet with Baroness Catherine Ashton, High Representative for
Foreign Affairs and Security Policy of the European Union, French Foreign
Minister Laurent Fabius, British FM William Hague, Bulgarian FM Nickolay Evtimov
Mladenov, Estonian FM Urmas Paet, Czech FM Karel Schwarzenberg, Croatian FM
Vesna Pusić, Slovakian FM Miroslav Lajčák, Swedish FM Carl Bildt, and with Greek
Deputy Foreign Minister Dimitris Kourkoulas. FM Liberman will also meet with
Belgian FM Didier Reynders.
During the Association Council meeting, FM Liberman will hold a dialogue with
heads of the EU and hold a bilateral meeting with Dr. Erato Kozakou-Marcoullis,
Foreign Minister of Cyprus and current President of the EU. He will also meet
with Štefan Füle, EU Commissioner for Enlargement and European Neighbourhood
Policy; and Antonio Tajani, EU Commissioner for Industry and
Entrepreneurship.
In the meetings, FM Liberman will discuss strengthening the ties between
Israel and the EU as well as bilateral issues, and developments in the Middle
East and their impact on the region. Liberman is also expected to bring up
Israel's view that the EU countries should include Hizbullah in their list of terrorist organizations and to ask
that security arrangements be boosted in airports and in Israeli and Jewish
facilities in their respective countries.
FM Liberman has said that solid evidence points to Hizbullah as the
perpetrator of the terrorist
attack in Burgas, Bulgaria last week, which is only the latest crime in a
long
series of terrorist acts for which Hizbullah has been responsible over the
years. The fact that Hizbullah is responsible to a large extent for the violence
and lack of quiet and stability in the Middle East obligates the European states
to act and to relate to the organization in the appropriate manner.