Calmy-Rey regrets Israeli “non-invitation”
Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey has expressed disappointment that no one from the Swiss government has been invited to Israel's 60th anniversary celebrations.
Switzerland will be represented at the festivities through its ambassador in Tel Aviv, she told the SonntagsZeitung newspaper, published on Sunday.
“Personally, I am disappointed that our country was not invited at government level,” she said.
Officials at the Israeli Embassy in the Swiss capital, Bern, and at the United Nations in Geneva could not be reached for comment.
Israeli President Shimon Peres has invited heads of state, ministers, scientists, philosophers and artists for a three-day conference to mark the Jewish state’s 60th birthday on May 14.
Among those invited are President Bush, former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel, former Czech President Vaclav Havel and Abdurrahman Wahid, former president of Indonesia, a country that has no diplomatic ties with Israel.
Strained relations
The relationship between Israel and Switzerland has been strained since a recent visit by Calmy-Rey to Iran to witness the signing of a multibillion-dollar natural gas supply contract between Swiss company EGL and Iran’s state-owned National Iranian Gas Export Company.
The deal prompted angry reactions from Jewish groups because Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has often called for the destruction of Israel. Alfred Donath, president of the Swiss Federation of Jewish Communities, said that by signing the gas deal Switzerland sent the wrong message at the wrong time.
Calmy-Rey defended the deal by saying every state had the right to pursue its economic interests and that Switzerland was not the only country buying Iranian oil and gas.
In the SonntagsZeitung she also reaffirmed Switzerland’s commitment to talking to all parties in the Middle East conflict.
“Switzerland has never taken sides, neither in the Middle East conflict nor anywhere else in the world,” she said.
Calmy-Rey has supported the so-called “Geneva Accord”, an alternative Middle East initiative worked out after two years of Swiss-funded secret negotiations between Israeli opposition figures and Palestinians. The deal would have mapped out borders between Israel and a future Palestinian state, but it was never officially endorsed by either side.
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Good offices
“Neutral”
“As a neutral state we talk to everyone,” Calmy-Rey said, adding that Switzerland would continue to condemn breaches of international humanitarian law.
“Particularly Israel, with its painful history, should understand and appreciate that,” she said.
In March, Switzerland was the only European member of the 47-nation UN Human Rights Council to vote in favour of a resolution condemning Israeli military action in Gaza that resulted in the death of more than 120 Palestinians, many of them civilians.
The military raids were prompted by Palestinian militant groups escalating their rocket fire into Israel.
Switzerland said at the time it wanted to send a strong signal to Israel about the “particular gravity of the events in the southern part of Israel and Gaza”.
swissinfo with agencies
Persia – as Iran was then known – opened an embassy in Bern in 1917.
In 1919 Switzerland opened a consulate general in Tehran.
In 2005 there were 187 Swiss citizens living in Iran.
At the end of 2004, 3,801 Iranians were living in Switzerland.
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