France seeks a 43-nation Union for the Mediterranean

Leaders of 43 countries met in Paris on Sunday to discuss a Union for the Mediterranean, a vast though somewhat nebulous assembly that hopes it can nudge this disparate and conflicted region toward peace and stability.

Coping with age-old enmities involving their peoples and others along the Mediterranean shores will be a central challenge to the union proposed by President Nicolas Sarkozy or France. Sarkozy has urged nations around the Mediterranean to "learn to love one another rather than to continue to hate each other and wage war."

Bernard Kouchner, the French foreign minister, on Sunday urged all the countries in the region to unite to address global warming, growing migration and shrinking water and energy resources.

The Union for the Mediterranean is Sarkozy's brainchild, originally devised as a pillar of his presidency and of France's leadership of the European Union. France holds the rotating EU post until the end of this year.

But Sarkozy's ambitious plan overlapped with European Union projects already in progress, and it was melded into EU efforts and expanded to include 27 members of the European Union, not just those on the Mediterranean coast.

http://iht.com/articles/2008/07/13/europe/mideast.php