The EU will wait to see the make-up of the new Palestinian unity government before deciding to work with it, EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said here on Thursday.
‘As we have said many times we are going to wait and see. Fortunately we have to wait and see a little less time now‘ that the government has been finalised, Solana told journalists on the sidelines of a meeting between the EU and the Association of Southeast Asian states in this southern German city.
Solana said he had not seen the composition of the government which unites the radical Islamist Hamas movement with president Mahmud Abbas‘s secular Fatah party.
‘We have to wait and see the list,‘ he said just minutes before the new unity government was unveiled.
The European Union and the other members of the so-called Mideast Quartet -- the United States, Russia and the United Nations -- have consistently said that any new Palestinian government must recognise Israel, renounce violence and respect past agreements.
If these criteria are met the Quartet has said it would lift a financial embargo imposed directly on the Hamas-led Palestinian government after the militant group swept to power in elections last year.
European Commission spokeswoman on external affairs Emma Udwin said in Brussels that no decision on renewing direct ties with the Palestinian government would be taken ‘before we can judge the programme and the actions of the next government‘.
The EU would also consult its Quartet partners she said. The next Middle East Quartet meeting is scheduled for the end of March, early April in Cairo.
She added that Salam Fayyad, named as finance minister and widely respected in the West, was ‘clearly someone the Commission has worked with in the past,‘ but told reporters ‘that should not lead you to jump to any conclusions‘.
The European Union is the main financial donor to the Palestinians, and gave almost 700 million euros (900 million dollars) last year, while keeping cash out of the hands of Hamas.
European Union leaders pledged at a Brussels summit last week to work with a new Palestinian unity government as long as its programme takes into account the Quartet‘s demands.