EU Have to be Kidding

European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana had secret talks with the Palestinian militant group Hamas even though the militant group is on the European Union’s list of banned organizations, he said in an interview broadcast on Thursday. 

“I have had direct contact with Hamas but not in the last few days,” Solana told BBC Radio. “Those meetings were not long. They were just to pass a clear message of where the international community was.” Asked how long ago they took place, he said: “months.”

British Foreign Minister Jack Straw, talking to the BBC from Jerusalem, declined to comment directly and repeated British policy on Hamas, which is committed to Israel’s destruction.

 

“Our position is very clear. We do not have contact with Hamas,” Straw said.

 

“We do not believe in contacts with Hamas or other proscribed organizations. What these organizations have to do if they want to take part in discussions is to renounce violence.”

A Foreign Ministry spokesman condemned Hamas but stopped short of criticizing Solana for meeting its representatives.

 

“We don’t see Hamas as a political partner,” the spokesman told BBC Radio’s Today program.

 

“We see them as a deadly terrorist organization responsible for countless suicide bombings in Israeli cities and towns. We think they’re part of the problem, not part of the solution.”

Two high-level Presbyterian Church (USA) employees have been fired in the aftermath of their taking part in a controversial meeting with a representative of Hezbollah, a group blamed for murdering hundreds of Americans and Israelis.

 

Kathy Leuckert, deputy executive associate director of the General Assembly Council, and Peter Sulyok, coordinator of the Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy, were notified that they were no longer employed by the Presbyterian Church (USA), according to a memo released Thursday morning by John Detterick, the executive director of the General Assembly Council.

EU Foreign Policy chief Javier Solana said Thursday he met with Hamas, but a few hours later changed his mind, and said he didn’t.

 

“I have had contacts with Hamas but not in the last few days,” Solana said in BBC radio interview broadcast Thursday morning. “These meetings were not long. They were just to pass a clear message of where the international community was.”

—-

No sooner had the interview been aired, and the wires ran the story, then Solana’s office put out a statement saying he never actually held a meeting with Hamas. The EU placed Hamas on its list of terror organizations in September 2003.

“With reference to the BBC interview broadcast today, the office of the High Representative, Javier Solana, clarifies that at no time [did] Dr. Solana wish to imply that direct contacts between himself and Hamas had taken place,” the statement read.

Which raises the question of how to explain the contradiction between what was said in Solana’s voice on the BBC, and what was written in his name in the statement.

Cristina Gallach, Solana’s spokesperson, said that Solana’s comment that the “meetings” with Hamas were not very long, was just a slip of the tongue, and that he meant to say that the indirect contacts were not very long.

“The interviewer used the word meetings,” Gallach told the Jerusalem Post. “Being late at night, after a long day, Solana used the word of the interviewer. The word ‘meeting’ should not have been used, but instead the word ‘contacts.’ Solana speaks about indirect contacts.”

 

While saying that these contacts are not taking place now, Gallach would not give any more detail about when they took place – before or after Hamas was blacklisted by the EU – or with whom.