FRANCE:FRENCH PRESIDENT Nicolas Sarkozy may have high hopes for his Mediterranean Union initiative but Arab leaders are far more sceptical about a project some suspect will bring little benefit to their region.
A number will not attend Sunday's launch summit for different reasons, among them Libya's Muammar Gadafy who recently described the union as an "insult" to Arabs and Africans, saying the economic co-operation it envisaged was nothing more than "bait" to lure Arab states.
Other leaders had to be cajoled into attending or sending representatives because of Israel's presence at the summit. They insist that the union should not serve as a "vehicle" for creeping normalisation with Israel.
Egyptian foreign minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit, whose country is the only Arab Mediterranean nation to hold full diplomatic relations with Israel, sought to allay such fears this week.
"The new union does not involve by any means any political or economic union, which is simply unimaginable," he told reporters following a meeting with Irish foreign minister Micheál Martin in Cairo.
Mr Aboul Gheit said while the initiative, which will be initially jointly presided over by Egypt and France, is to be welcomed, it should be balanced between the northern and southern rims of the Mediterranean.
"In order to immunise the process from failure, the project has to be one of joint ownership. We have to participate and decide jointly," he told The Irish Times.