Sarkozy wants to give Europe a central role in any peace deal in the Middle East [AFP]

The spotlight at a summit of more than 40 countries around the Mediterranean has been stolen by the Middle East peace process and the emergence of France as a key player in it.

Leaders from 43 nations launched the new Union for the Mediterranean aimed at boosting ties between Mediterranean countries on Sunday.

"It is a great satisfaction to announce to you ... that the summit for the Union for the Mediterranean has ended and that it has unanimously adopted a declaration," Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, said.

The new union, dubbed, "Club Med" will be co-chaired by Sarkozy and Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian president, with leaders of the member countries bound to meet every two years.

The talks were notable for the presence of Bashar al-Assad, the president of Syria. He addressed the future of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights region in talks with Olmert mediated by Turkey.

The Syria-Israel negotiations at the summit are the highest-level talks so far since Ankara started the mediation process, and come a day after al-Assad said that Syria and Lebanon had agreed to establish formal diplomatic relations.

But when Olmert made an address to the assembled leaders in the final hours of the summit, al-Assad left the room.

Peace talks

Ehud Olmert, Israel’s prime minister, and Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, also attended the summit, where they held talks on the Middle East peace process on the sidelines.

"Heads of state and government reaffirm their support for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, as referred to in the Lisbon Euro-Med ministerial meeting (November 2007) and according to the Annapolis process," the offending paragraph read.

Abbas argued that it should have carried an explicit reference to an eventual two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The final declaration from the summit also said that member states will "pursue a mutually and effectively verifiable Middle East zone free of weapons of mass destruction," to includes nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.

Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan president, boycotted the union meeting in Paris, but Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister, attended after pleas from Sarkozy, who has opposed Turkey's membership to the EU.

Sarkozy said it "was an extraordinary gamble to bring together in the same room all the European states and all the countries of the southern rim of the Mediterranean".

"It is a great initiative that has been born. We have to complete it now and then take it on further," he said.

Speaking after Sarkozy at the closing press conference, Mubarak said he was "certain that this union, this initiative will be fruitful".

"We are certain that a new page will open in this co-operation that will lead us toward more peace," he said.

Peace deal 'close'

Earlier on Sunday, Olmert said that Israel and the Palestinians have "never been this close" to a peace deal.

Sarkozy's project is intended to promote close ties among 43 nations [AFP]

Abbas said that both sides were "serious and wanted to achieve peace", before the conference got under way.

As the union talks went ahead, the Israeli government announced that a planned prisoner swap with Lebanese group Hezbollah will go ahead on Wednesday.

The Israeli prison service will return five imprisoned Lebanese fighters for Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, Israeli soldiers captured by Hezbollah two years ago in a cross-border raid. Both men are presumed dead.

One of the Lebanese prisoners to be released is Samir Kantar, a member of the Palestine Liberation Front who was jailed in 1979 for the murder of three members of an Israeli family in Nahariya.

Olmert also agreed "in principle" on Sunday to release an additional but unspecified number of Palestinian prisoners, Mark Regev, a spokesman for the Israeli government, said.

Heads of state and government from countries representing some 756 million people, attended the summit. Twenty-seven EU nations are among those taking part in the new union.

Sarkozy's project aims to build on the Barcelona process of 1995, which aimed at Euro-Mediterranean dialogue and co-operation, but was plagued by disputes between Israel and its Arab neighbours.

The union is first set to discuss modest goals of cleaning up pollution in the Mediterranean, building highways and sea lanes, disaster response projects, developing solar energy, boosting education and research, and helping to foster business.

Arab countries, led by Algeria, managed to secure guarantees in the final declaration of the founding summit that the union will not allow a creeping normalisation of ties with Israel.

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