France, Italy and Spain are seeking a Middle East ceasefire, an exchange of prisoners and an international peace conference, Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero has said after talks with French President Jacques Chirac. The three countries are also calling for a Palestinian "government of national unity" and the despatch of a fact-finding mission to the Palestinian territories, he said at a press conference.
"All this violence must end," Zapatero added. "We want to launch a joint initiative on the Middle East situation and push it through at European Union level, preferably with Germany and Britain."
Chirac for his part said that the EU had to act in the face of "the increasingly dramatic situation in the Middle East and in Palestine in particular."
"We are going to act jointly with the Spanish and Italian governments, with the cooperation of the EU ... to try to initiate the indispensable moral and political reforms in the Middle East," he added.
The two leaders spoke as the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians hotted up further Thursday.
Palestinian militants fired rockets into Israel, whose warplanes raided the Gaza Strip, a day after a woman was killed by a Palestinian rocket attack on the southern Israeli town of Sderot.
