LEAD: EU's Ashton calls for Israel to lift Gaza blockade

Jan 25, 2012, 11:23 GMT

Gaza City - EU Foreign Policy chief Catherine Ashton called Wednesday for Israel to lift its blockade on the Gaza Strip, as she signed a multi-million dollar financing agreement for a United Nations training centre in the salient.

She said the 71 million dollar agreement was important, 'but the most important thing is our political commitments to the Gaza Strip, therefore I always call on the Israelis to reopen the crossing points in order to enable to population of Gaza to import and export.'

'We believe that the blockade on Gaza has to be lifted and allow people to freely move,' she added.

Israel imposed its blockade on Gaza in 2006, after militants launched a cross-border raid and snatched an Israeli soldier. The siege was tightened considerably in 2007, when the Islamist Hamas movement seized control of the salient.

Last year Israel relaxed some of the strictures it had imposed on the enclave in light of international pressure after the Israeli military killed nine activists during its interception of a Gaza-bound aid flotilla.

While in Gaza Ashton did not hold any meetings with officials from Hamas. The Palestinian group is currently under a Western diplomatic boycott for its refusal to renounce violence, agree to honour past Israeli-Palestinian agreements, and recongise Israel;s right to exist.

Ashton's visit to Gaza came on the second day of a three-day visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories, as she attempts to push Israelis and Palestinians to continue peace talks begun this month in Jordan.

'I believe that there should be serious peace negotiations in order to achieve the principle of the two-state solution,' she said in Gaza.

Israeli and Palestinian envoys have over the past three weeks held a series of face-to-face talks in Amman, their first in over 15 months.

But the Palestinians have warned they will quit the talks after January 26, if Israel continues expanding settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. They have also urged Israel to free more Palestinian prisoners.

Ashton was slated to hold separate meetings Wednesday afternoon with Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, and then with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

She was also likely to meet Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Jordan on Thursday.

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