 Thank you very much also for the opportunity to be here in Dublin and share a few thoughts with you on the Middle East. Let me first explain what the point person on the Middle East does. The title is much longer, but just to have an understanding of what the former title is, Special Representative on the Middle East Peace Process, EU Special Representative on the Middle East Peace Process. I have been appointed by, I've been presented by Kathy Ashton, the higher representative and vice president of the European Union, and appointed by the 27 foreign ministers. And I'm, the task which I have, the mandate which has been negotiated by the 27 foreign ministers concerns, in short, the relationship between Israel and other, or the relationship between Israel and its neighbour countries. This is also Lebanon and Syria, which for obvious reasons are not on the agenda right now, at least as far as the relationship with Israel and the possible peace process is concerned. The core issue is Palestine, the Palestinian question. And when the time my mandate was negotiated, the assumption was that the relationship between Israel and Jordan and Israel and Egypt would be more or less need to be managed. As we all know, this has, we had gotten a different connotation right now, but this is the context in which I'm working. When I left Damascus this January, the situation there was already getting very critical. We were more and more finding ourselves in a new environment in the Arab scene. And I would, in the Arab field, and I would like to dwell a little bit on this to set the scene for where the Palestinian-Israeli conflict stays right now. We do find ourselves, we means the European, find ourselves in a new strategic environment at the southern border. We find that all the former coalitions which we have witnessed for 20, 30, 40 years are about to change. We don't yet know exactly how they will change, but they do change. If we go a little bit country by country just to underline what I'm meaning, we have seen Tunisia, which is probably the country which, as we can see it right now, has started the Arabian or the Arab Spring, which seems to be the country which is most easily trying to adopt itself to the new situation. In Egypt we have the Muslim Brotherhood, which is in charge, which puts a lot of questions also to the Muslim Brotherhood. We have the Egypt has a peace treaty with Israel. And the question was would they honor the peace treaty? And before Morsi was elected and afterwards the Egyptian position was we will honor our international agreements. But the relationship with Israel is something which they are at this moment trying to restructure and trying to see how they develop it. Syria was always an important player, more in the sense of a spoiler than it be a constructive person, a constructive partner, how this will work out at the moment we don't know, but it certainly has not this role anymore. What the role of Syria will be we will have to see. Iraq for a long time was a very proud country and an important player. It has lost this during Saddam Hussein more and more, now over the years also. But it is certainly a country which will come back as it is big, as it is a traditional country, as it has a lot of oil reserves. Saudi Arabia again is a proud player, but they are very much focused on the domestic issues who will become, how will the future relationship will be. The Gulf countries are economically important, but they are scared also or concerned rather say from a prospect of strengthening Iran. And Turkey is a new player. We do see new coalitions and we don't know exactly how these coalitions will work out. I'll give you a few examples of what we have been observing in the last months. The relationship between Turkey and Egypt has become much stronger. As we know, Turkey has moved itself much more into its regional context for a variety of reasons. For a while, lots of Arab states looked at Turkey as a modern Islamist state as a certain example. Turkey has re-established its relationship then with a re-strengthened Egypt. And there is no real concept visible there, but we see that these countries are moving together. Egypt itself has re-emerged as a strong power. It has a problem under Mubarak because the country was in the situation it was before. We don't know exactly how it is back, but it's determined to play a role. One interesting example is the possibility of Egypt finding new coalition partners not only with Turkey, but also with Iran. You may remember that Iran and Egypt were on very bad terms. There was the potential of an attack on Mubarak. I think it was in Addis Abibar a couple of years ago, which failed, but which was attributed to Iranian sources. And since then, the relationship with Iran and Egypt were extremely bad. Now Morsi made two steps, two signals. One, he went to the summit of the non-alignment movement a couple of weeks ago to Tehran, which was a first visit. And then he established or he brought the idea in of what they're called an Islamic quartet concerning Syria. When they saw that the situation in Syria was deteriorated more and more, he suggested to have a group of Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey, and Egypt to discuss the situation. They didn't get very far, but they only met in this context once, not on the level of, I think, deputy ministers. But this was a context which was impossible to imagine a couple of years ago. So we see that things are moving and we see that we're finding ourselves in an area where lots of the players themselves don't know exactly what the future will be. But we see the changes. One country I should add, and that's Qatar, very small, a lot of gas, a lot of money. They're using. And they're using them in various contexts, in the Syrian context, with financial support, some financial support, but particularly through Al Jazeera, which took a clear position in the Syrian context. We've seen it in the inner Palestinian conflict, Hamas and Fatah, they tried mediation. And we now saw that a few weeks ago, the Emir of Qatar went to Gaza to pay a visit and to even leave an ambassador in Gaza who is in charge of the reconstruction process of a amount of roughly $400 million, which the Qataris put into Gaza. So we see things are moving. You will have realized that in this whole context there's one country which I didn't name, and that's Israel. Israel is in this whole changing environment of the strategic picture not present as an actor. They are obviously concerned and observing it extremely carefully what's going on. But they are not able to act constructively in this context. The reason is, as we know, obvious it's the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Now, this Israel-Palestinian conflict for a long time has been also a pretext of many Arab states. And one result of the Arabvelian is in the Arab Spring is that one argument of the Arab states has been proven unrealistic. They said, we cannot move on our domestic front and our domestic reforms unless the conflict in Israel, in a conflict Israel-Palestinian continues. This obviously was wrong because we have seen otherwise. But what is still true is that the conflict has so much influence as the public arena in the Arab world that despite some of the private announcements some leaders are doing, they don't feel that they have the public support to moving in this direction. So as long as this Palestinian-Israeli conflict continues, Israel has great difficulties to be an active player in this changing environment. I was discussing this a lot with Israelis. And the Israeli answer is, how can you expect us to do this? We see, we don't know what's happened in Egypt. We see a difficult security situation on the Sinai, on the Sinai. We have observed the situation in Gaza. We don't know what's happening with Jordan, Syria, et cetera, et cetera. How can you expect from us to making a peace agreement or any sort of agreement with the Palestinians in this difficult moment? I think this is a fair argument, looking at the Israeli experience and the perception and their very concrete fears. I think this is true. My counter-argument is that the military protection, which every state, particularly also Israel needs in this context, and this is our European experience, always needs a supplement of a political frame. We are right now in a discussion and the situation is moving, but this is the situation and also the political situation in which we find ourselves. Now, let me just say a few words to the European position on the conflict in the Middle East. Over the last weeks and months, the careful observer, now almost that to say the diplomatic observer, may have observed a couple of changes in the European position towards the situation. I mean European position, I mean the consensus among 27. Lots of positions were known before and were affected by this party and opposed by the other one. But what is interesting about the European position is that we find a consensus of all 27. The first was in May when the European foreign ministers in their council conclusions, which means the monthly results of the discussions and the consensus text, which comes out of it, declared that they are highly concerned about the so-called viability of the two-state solution because of two factors, one, the ongoing settlement activities of Israel and the difficult financial situations of the Palestinians. Now you may say, why is this so interesting? The answer is Europeans always were putting topics on the international agenda. It took time because to get 27 or 20 or however we were to give in situation together obviously is a time-consuming process. This was all with the strength of the European Union. And it started with 1980, the Venice Declaration for the first time the European Union at that time I think we were 12 mentioned for the first time the right of self-determination of the Palestinian people, which meant Palestinian people as such were recognized. It went continued with the recognition of a two-state solution, which later was also adopted by the Americans, to the indication of concern on the ongoing settlement activities, which is also a European issue. Those who lived there could see this for a while. And now the Europeans started to draw the attention on the danger that this two-state solution might or the viability of a two-state solution might end because if the settlement construction continues more, there is no more space to have a two-state solution. Again this is not a dramatic change, but it's a change in the approach, which has been confirmed also in later texts, which the European Union has decided. A second issue which became much more visible over the last days were the discussion among the Europeans on the vote among Europeans on the observer status of the Palestinians in the General Assembly. Those of you who have observed know that in the end I think we had 14 yes-12 abstentions and one no-vote among the European unions. Some people say the European Union is not unified on this. On one degree this is evident because there were different votes. On the other hand, we still agreed in a joint declaration that despite the different votes we have two things in common. One is the basis of our policy, which is based on many years before, and secondly of the vision of a two-state solution, even if you fear it is in danger. And therefore after the vote we had another conclusion a few days ago where the European Union gave a few new indicators, which will most likely shape the common 27th position for the next future. Number one is we said we want to have renewed structural negotiations in the year 2013. You may say this doesn't sound particularly new because this is what we all expect. But as the process is ongoing and slow since a long time, I think the expression of the European Union as 27 to say in 2013 we need, in 10,000 means a date, we want to have this renewed structured position as Europeans is the first expression of the 27 foreign ministers altogether. The second is that European ministers for a second time in a relatively short context mentioned we need international parameters. For a long time the approach of the international community has been to create the frame for the two parties to negotiate among themselves and we were ready to underline whatever the outcome was to be. Now the European Union says maybe we have to go another step and define joint common parameters. We didn't say which parameters because this is under discussion but we say probably we do need parameters. These are probably the most important new elements in the last, as far as the future is concerned and as far as the short-term approach there was another indicator saying that we would like to have, we would like both parties return to negotiations without preconditions. This also cannot be understood if you know the context because again you will say this doesn't sound particularly new but it means that we want both parties to actually go back to the negotiation tables, don't start to put up preconditions this and that way in order to only come to the room but we want them to come to the room without preconditions now because if they don't start negotiations they will never end the negotiations. That's where the European Union stands now. That's where it's also the point when Ireland will take over the presidency of the European Union. You know that the presidency since we have a high representative has gained a different approach than it was before but still I'm happy to be in Dublin here at this occasion and I wish Ireland for the next half year not only in the foreign policy field where it is less important than the other fields, a lot of success and hope also some good ideas how to advance in this difficult file. Thank you very much.