European Jewish Congress (EJC) president Pierre Besnainou and other EJC Executive members held talks in Madrid with Spanish José Luís Rodríguez Zapatero, foreign minister Miguel Angel Moratinos and Justice minister Juan Fernando López Aguilar. The EJC delegation was in Madrid for the second Shoah memorial commemorations.
The main points of the discussion with Zapatero were concerns over anti-Jewish statements by Iran's president Ahmadinejad and his Venezuelan counterpart Hugo Chávez, who had compared Israel’s military operations to the ones led by Adolf Hitler. Zapatero said that a positive turn in the Middle East peace process and a breakthrough in Iraq would be an essential stage in bringing an end to terrorism. “Europe in general and Spain in particular have a major role to play in the Middle East, where the peace process must be resumed genuinely,” both Zapatero and Besnainou pointed out.
The EJC president congratulated Zapatero for the fact that at present, anti-Semitism was not a major preoccupation in Spain, and that Spain was a country epitomizing the respect for human rights and democratic values. Zapatero said that Spain would always be at the forefront of fighting anti-Semitism, because it was an attack against human rights in general.
Video clip of the event: http://smultimedia.la-moncloa.es/presidencia/260107_Jewish_UE.wmv
