The heavyweights of European Union foreign policy set off from Brussels on Monday on an intense five-day mission to get Pakistan and key Middle East states to join a global push against terrorism.
Led by Belgian Foreign Minister Louis Michel, the EU ministerial team also includes the 15-nation bloc's foreign policy high representative Javier Solana and EU External Relations Commissioner Chris Patten.
Travelling with them is foreign minister Josep Pique of Spain, which takes over the agenda-setting presidency of the EU next January.
The mission follows an emergency summit of EU leaders last Friday that called for a broad global coalition against terrorism, and supported as "legitimate" US plans to strike back for the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
"It's not a fight or a battle against a particular religion or particular countries -- on the contrary," Solana told reporters Monday after he conferred with NATO Secretary General George Robertson, shortly before departure.
"That's the reason why we're doing so many efforts, from the European Union, to get as many countries of the Arab world with us as possible," Solana said.
In an interview that appeared Monday in the French newspaper Le Figaro, Michel said the EU delegation would give certain countries "a chance to make a new strategic choice."
"If the coalition is big enough and includes representatives of all the great civilizations, I really think that it can be efficient," he said.
"We will explain the position of the European Union, tell our Arab friends on the ground that there is no amalgam possible: it is a coalition against terrorism, against fanatics, but not against Islam."
Patten's spokesman Gunner Wiegand said the troika was heading first to Pakistan, on the front line of expected US strikes on Afghanistan.
There it will hold talks with President General Pervez Musharraf and Foreign Minister Abdas Sattar, before proceeding Tuesday evening to Iran's capital Tehran.
On Wednesday the Europeans will see Iranian President Mohammad Khatami and Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi, hot on the heels of a visit to Tehran the day before by British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw.
Later Wednesday the troika will go to Riyadh to see Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdulaziz and Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal.
On Thursday morning, it will proceed to Cairo for talks with Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher and President Hosni Mubarak, who will himself have just come back from Paris, Berlin and Rome.
The troika will also see Arab League Secretary General Amr Mussa.
Wiegand said the troika would "most likely" go to Jordan's capital Amman on Friday, "but this is, however, still uncertain because apparently King Abdullah II is out of the country."
The troika is also to go to Damascus on Friday, seeing President Bashar al-Assad and Foreign Minister Faruq al-Shara.
On the trip home, either Friday or Saturday, the delegation will make a stopover in Skopje to shore up intensive EU efforts to help Macedonia overcome an ethnic Albanian rebellion that threatened to explode into a new Balkan war.
Asked what might happen if the United States carries out any military attacks while the so-called troika is travelling, Wiegand replied: "We're in a Belgian air force plane... I'm sure all necessary security measures will be taken in terms of routing the plane."
"But this is a highly hypothetical question at this stage," he added -- BRUSSELS (AFP)
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