(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.