smh, The European Commission has apologised to Israel for an opinion poll which found that Israel is the country most ordinary Europeans regard as the biggest threat to world peace.
Israeli leaders and international Jewish groups have angrily denounced the poll, saying European criticism of Israel is motivated by anti-Semitism.
In apparent agreement, the President of the European Commission, Romano Prodi, said the results “point to the continued existence of a bias that must be condemned out of hand”.
“To the extent that this may indicate a deeper, more general prejudice against the Jewish world, our repugnance is even more radical,” he said.
The present holder of the rotating European presidency, the Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, said he felt “surprise and indignation” and that the question had been “misleading”.
Mr Berlusconi recently weathered a similar controversy after publicly denying that the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini played any role in the Holocaust. He was subsequently awarded a prize by the Jewish Anti-Defamation League for his support for Israel and the US.
Carried out as part of continuing surveys by the European Union, the telephone poll sampled 7500 respondents in all 15 EU member states.
Presented with the names of 14 countries, the respondents were asked if they regarded each in turn as a threat to world peace. The results showed 59 per cent of respondents agreed that Israel was the biggest threat to world peace. The US, Iran and North Korea came joint second with 53 per cent. Iraq came next with 52 per cent, followed by Afghanistan.
Libya, Saudi Arabia, China, India, Somalia, Russia, Syria and Pakistan all scored less than 50 per cent.
Palestine was not listed because, the EU says, it is not a country.
Meanwhile, on a visit to Russia, the Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, said he was prepared to meet the recently appointed Palestinian Prime Minister, Ahmed Qurie, to discuss the stalled “road map” for peace.
The Israeli Government froze contacts with the Palestinian Authority following the breakdown of a short-lived unilateral Palestinian ceasefire, saying it could not negotiate while the authority's chairman, Yasser Arafat – whom it accuses of terrorism – is still pulling the strings of power.
