Leaders of 43 nations take part in new union

PARIS — Leaders of 43 nations with nearly 800 million inhabitants inaugurated a new "Union for the Mediterranean" on Sunday, meant to bring the northern and southern countries that ring the sea closer together through practical projects dealing with the environment, climate, transport, immigration and policing.

The meeting was also an opportunity for President Nicolas Sarkozy of France to exercise some highly public Middle East diplomacy by playing host to a session between Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel and the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas.

The meeting also represented an end to the diplomatic isolation of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who has been ostracized for his alliance with Iran, for his support for Palestinian groups classified by the United States and the European Union as terrorists, and because of allegations of his country's involvement in the 2005 assassination of Rafik Hariri, the former prime minister of Lebanon.

Syria also attended the U.S.-led Middle East summit meeting at Annapolis, Md., in November.

Since then, Israel and Syria have opened serious but indirect peace talks with Turkish mediation, and Assad is eager to rejoin the world, especially with a new U.S. president to be elected this year.

In a final declaration Sunday, Israel, Syria, the Palestinians along with countries across Europe, the Middle East and North Africa agreed to "pursue a mutually and effectively verifiable Middle East Zone free of weapons of mass destruction."

But it was unclear how the signatories would enforce the pledge.

Israel is widely thought to have a stockpile of nuclear weapons but neither confirms nor denies it has them. Recently, tensions between Israel and Iran have risen over Tehran's nuclear program. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has often spoken of wiping Israel off the map. And Israel and its ally the United States believe Tehran's nuclear program is aimed at producing nuclear weapons, despite Iran's insistence it is for producing nuclear energy.

While trying to unify the region, the summit laid bare deep divisions and highlighted how hard it will be to parlay the meeting's goodwill and words into real progress. Syria's president refused to shake the Israeli prime minister's hand, and Morocco's king snubbed the meeting attended by the president of rival Algeria.

Still, Sarkozy reveled at having brought so many leaders to the same table for the first time.