EU to Revive Mediterranean Union

EU to Revive Mediterranean Union

June 17, 2009

Prophecy in the News - The French Foreign Ministry has announced that the Union for the Mediterranean, a project aimed at boosting ties between the European Union and Mediterranean states, is to be formally revived at the end of this month. The announcement follows a meeting of French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner and Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit, who jointly hold the presidency of the new bloc.

The project, which was first proposed by then EU President Nicolas Sarkozy and came into being this time last year, has been fraught with difficulties. Northern European countries disliked the idea of EU funds being spent on a grandiose scheme that would show favouritism to southern members of the union. So membership was increased to accommodate the entire European Union.

Arab nations also signalled their unwillingness to join the union due to Israel's inclusion in the group, fearing their participation might lend legitimacy to Israel's right to exist. But Arab opposition to the project was overcome when the EU offered the Arab League observer status within the new organization. The EU also sweetened the deal for Israel, increasing its representation within the group. Libya refused to join the union over Israel's inclusion, and instead was granted observer status until Gaddafi changes his mind.

And it seems that the recent thaw in relations between Libya and Italy may pave the way for Libyan membership in the Mediterranean Union. Operation Cast Lead, launched against Hamas in the Gaza Strip last year, was used as an excuse by Arab nations not to participate in the EU project, even though it was the breaking of the Hamas ceasefire that precipitated the fighting.

But now with a new American administration in power that is seeking to repair its reputation in the Muslim world, the EU is aiming to revive its Mediterranean project with a goal to kick-starting the peace process and expanding its sphere of influence over the region.

At the end of May the head of Egyptian diplomacy in France, Ahmed Abul Gheit, had told AFP that the meeting would take place on June 25 in order to "re-activate" the Union, whose work was stopped since the Israeli attack to Gaza Strip at the end of 2008... The French Minister for Foreign Affairs Bernard Kouchner on Wednesday will go to Sweden--which is taking over the EU presidency from the 1st of July--to discuss with his counterpart Carl Bilt the proposal to link the EU presidency with the Union's governance, which so far is jointly held by France and Egypt.

Following Obama's address to the Muslim world in Cairo at the beginning of the month and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's speech last Sunday, the European Council released a statement of its own in regards to the Middle East peace process. The Council, of whom Javier Solana is the Secretary-General, reiterated its commitment to the establishment of an "independent, democratic, contiguous and viable Palestinian state," reminding us of how Judah and Israel itself may be carved in two because of concessions by the international community to the Palestinian Authority.

The Council also backed Obama's call for an immediate end to all "settlement activities, including in East Jerusalem and including natural growth," in contrast to Netanyahu's demand that Jerusalem remain undivided and accessible to people of all religions. And the EU reaffirmed its support of the Middle East peace process through tools such as the European Neighbourhood Policy and the Union for the Mediterranean.

"10. A comprehensive settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict requires a regional approach, covering the political, security and economic dimensions. Encouraged by enhanced US engagement, and convinced that tangible benefits regarding economic development and security would facilitate achieving agreement on the various political tracks, the EU stands ready to use all instruments at its disposal, such as the European Neighbourhood Policy and the Union for the Mediterranean. Through numerous agreements with partners in the region, the EU is uniquely placed to work with the parties on key issues of regional development. In light of further developments at the political level and on the ground, the EU will carefully assess how its policies and programmes can promote concrete and early results on the path of a comprehensive settlement of the conflict."

As we saw at its inception, far from being a political project aimed at merely increasing peace and prosperity in the Mediterranean region, Sarkozy's vision of the Union for the Mediterranean is nothing less than a revival of the old Roman Empire itself.

The French President claimed in February 2007: "Within every man and woman who lives on the shores of the Mediterranean sleeps the memory, nostalgia for the unity lost 15 centuries ago." He added that he wanted to be "the president of a France that will set the Mediterranean on the path of its reunification after 12 centuries of division."

That vision of a revival of the order of the old Roman Empire is also shared by other politicians involved in the European Union project.

Last year European Commission President Manuel Barroso, when questioned on exactly what the European project hoped to achieve, claimed that the EU was the world's first "non-imperial empire."

Belgian politician Paul-Henri Spaak, who famously called for a man, "be he god or devil," to lift the nations out of the economic morass into which they were sinking, was a signatory to the Treaty of Rome which established the institutions of the European Union. When asked how he felt when signing the treaty, he said, "We felt like Romans on that day... We were consciously recreating the Roman Empire once more."

Sarkozy's 'Club Med' summit challenges EU
Irish Times (July 12, 2008) - French President Nicolas Sarkozy has called tomorrow's Paris Summit for the Mediterranean "The best news for peace in the Middle East." Before the summit even started, the French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner declared the gathering "a historic success". Speaking in Egypt, Ireland's foreign minister Micheál Martin called the meeting "an important initiative, and one we support strongly." For the first time, all states with a Mediterranean shoreline will gather, along with the EU 27, under the glass dome of the Grand Palais in central Paris. Forty-one of the 44 heads of state and government who were invited will attend - itself no small feat. The Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert will sit in the same room with Arab leaders, who may nonetheless refuse to be photographed with him.

Mediterranean summit hailed as 'best news for peace in the Middle East'
Prophecy in the News (July 12, 2008) - French President Nicholas Sarkozy has hailed tomorrow's Paris summit as the "best news for peace in the Middle East." Forty-one of the forty-four heads of state invited to the summit have agreed to attend. The list of participants include Albania, Algeria, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Latvia, Lebanon, Libya, Lithuania, Malta, Monaco, Montenegro, Morocco, Netherlands, Palestinian Authority, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey and the United Kingdom. French President Nicholas Sarkozy and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak will co-host the event. But it is the presence Syrian President Bashar Assad and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that is expected to steal the show. Both countries have been involved in indirect peace negotiations since May, and have signalled their readiness to move to direct talks.

43-Nation Mediterranean Union Created

Originally Reported July 13, 2008

AP — French President Nicolas Sarkozy urged the disparate and conflicted countries around the Mediterranean Sea on Sunday to make peace as European rivals did in the 20th century, as he launched an unprecedented Union for the Mediterranean...

"The European and the Mediterranean dreams are inseparable," Sarkozy told leaders from more than 40 nations in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. "We will succeed together; we will fail together... We will build peace in the Mediterranean together, like yesterday we built peace in Europe," Sarkozy said. He insisted the new body would not be "north against south, not Europe against the rest ... but united."

The union Sarkozy championed as a pillar of his presidency brought together around one table for the first time dignitaries such rival nations as Israel and Syria, Algeria and Morocco, Turkey and Greece. Coping with age-old enmities involving their peoples and others along the Mediterranean shores will be a central challenge to the new union encompassing some 800 million people.

Sarkozy went to special efforts to bring Syria into the international fold for the summit: Assad met Lebanese President Michel Suleiman and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, separately, both for the first time. And he met Sarkozy, after years of chill between their countries.

Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak, co-presiding the summit with Sarkozy, said: "We are linked by a common destiny." He said the union has better chances of success than a previous cooperation process launched in Barcelona in 1995 because the new body focuses on practical projects parallel to efforts toward Mideast peace.

Mubarak called on the new union to tackle reducing the wealth "gap" between north and south, and cited other southern Mediterranean "challenges" as education, food safety, health and social welfare. "The success of the Union will depend on... reforms and durable development," Mubarak said.

A draft declaration obtained by The Associated Press shows that summit participants will announce "objectives of achieving peace, stability and security" in the region. The six firm measures it names include a region-wide solar energy project, a cross-Mediterranean student exchange program, and a plan to clean up the polluted sea.

The draft declaration says the Union for the Mediterranean is to be operational by the end of this year, and unlike any previous body, it will be jointly run by all its members. It will have a dual presidency, held jointly for rotating terms by one country within the European Union and one country on the Mediterranean shore.

The draft also speaks of democratic principles, human rights and fundamental freedoms--values Western critics have accused such union members as Syria of violating.

Algeria's President Abdelaziz Bouteflika said he hoped the union would make it easier for North Africans to receive visas for Europe. "Our common Sea should bring us closer together, not separate us," the president said in an interview with official Algerian news agency APS. He also questioned whether the union would have enough money to get things done and whether "the EU really wants to contribute to bringing southern Mediterranean countries up to speed."

Germany's Merkel said, though, that the project would have about US$20.6 billion that has not yet been spent by the Barcelona Process--the forerunner of the Mediterranean union. Merkel, who pushed to expand Sarkozy's idea to include all 27 EU nations, called Sunday's meeting "a very good start" and said it could help the Middle East conflict.

The Union for the Mediterranean is Sarkozy's brainchild and was timed to coincide with the French presidency of the European Union. Paris holds the rotating post until the end of this year. But Sarkozy's ambitious plan overlapped with EU 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.

Sunday's meeting was seen as more significant for the bodies gathered than for any immediate progress it is expected to achieve.

Israel's Olmert said: "We are closer than ever to a possible (peace) agreement today" with the Palestinians--and said he hoped for direct contacts "soon" with enemy Syria.

Earlier Sunday, France's foreign minister urged the countries to unite to deal with global warming, growing migration and shrinking water and energy resources. "To do nothing would be a risk. We are fragile. Our world is fragile. Latent tensions and growing disparities are too dangerous for this unstable epoch. We have everything to gain by reinforcing our ties," Bernard Kouchner said.

On Sunday morning, Sarkozy met with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who had shown reticence about coming to the summit. The leadership of the mostly Muslim country fears that the Mediterranean grouping is designed to keep Turkey out of the full EU membership that it seeks.

The Mediterranean gathering will be capped Monday with more than dozen leaders attending France's national Bastille Day military parade as special guests.

The new union is to include at least 43 nations, nearly all of which sent a president or prime minister to the summit. Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi objected to the whole idea and refused to come.

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According to Herman Hoeksema, Behold He Cometh, © 1969:

The deception of the devil must work out till the bitter end. At the time near the end of this dispensation, the heathen nations indeed shall be awakened out of their prolonged slumber, becoming conscious of their power and quickly adopting the anti-Christian civilization.

In other words, the heathen nations shall be civilized and they shall become conscious of their power; and they shall, for a time, join forces with the beast and the false prophet to form one great world empire. Nevertheless, they shall remain pagan in every respect, and though they give their power to the beast for "one hour," for "a little season," this cannot possibly last.

The future combined one-world power of the nominally Christian nations and heathen nations cannot last, because ultimately the ten kings shall hate the whore and shall make her desolate and naked and shall eat her flesh and burn her with fire (Revelation 17:16). Therefore, shortly before the end of this world, the devil's final deception of the nations shall take place.

The heathen nations and the nominally Christian world will ultimately gather as separate forces for the last war, which will be a world war in the strictest sense of the word. Looking upon the nominally Christian world, which in fact will be an anti-Christian civilization, the heathen nations shall do as the nations of the old dispensation did with respect to Jerusalem; that is, they shall say: "Let us go up to Jerusalem; let Zion be defiled; let our eye look upon Zion!" And again the Lord will use the hostile spirit of the heathen nations to destroy the anti-Christian power and eat the flesh of the great whore.

In Revelation chapters 16 and 17, there mention is made of ten kings who as yet have received no kingdom, but shall receive power as kings for one hour with the beast: their dominion shall last but "one hour" with the beast; that is, "a little season." In Revelation chapter 20, the reference is evidently to the same going forth of the devil to the nations, the kings of the whole world that live on the four quarters of the earth, to deceive them and gather them for battle.

It is especially Gog and Magog that look upon all Christendom, no matter how apostate, as the beloved city, even as the heathen nations in the old dispensation considered earthly Jerusalem to be the city of God no matter how apostate and wicked it had become. The nations of Gog and Magog, in compassing about and coming to battle against Christendom in its widest sense, certainly intend to destroy "the beloved city," the cause of Christ, and to make paganism supreme in the world. In this, they reveal their wickedness and become ripe for the judgment. God nevertheless uses them to inflict His judgments upon the anti-Christian world.

The final result of this anti-Christian influence will be that the nations thus affected will unite their forces for war, the last war that shall ever be fought on earth. However, they will never touch the camp of the saints: the people of God shall look for the coming redemption, which shall then be very near.