The European Union’s foreign ministers today bowed to calls for the EU not to issue any statement that could affect an initiative by the US to bring Israel and Palestine back to the negotiating table.

A group of EU member states had called for the bloc to follow up on strong statements made last May and December in which the foreign ministers had warned that the construction of Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian territory threatened to make a two-state solution impossible.

Construction has continued in the months since.

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In the end, however, the ministers opted not to issue new statements or to indicate what steps they might consider in future, with Catherine Ashton, the EU’s foreign policy chief, limiting herself to saying that previous conclusions remained valid.

The US’s new secretary of state, John Kerry, has in recent months asked the EU to give him space to pursue a peace initiative with the Israelis and the Palestinians.

Diplomats from EU member states say that they know very little about what the US is discussing with the two sides. Ashton this morning made clear that she too has limited knowledge of the US’s thinking, but nonetheless threw her backing behind whatever ideas Kerry might eventually formulate.

“He will tell us all about these proposals when he’s ready to do so, and I think it’s very important that when he comes up with something, we all back him,” she said.

Ashton has in recent weeks sought to remove one of the member states’ principal sources of information in the region, by ending the post of EU special envoy for the Middle East peace process. Member states unanimously opposed that suggestion. The current envoy is a German diplomat appointed in January 2012 by Ashton, Andreas Reinicke. His mandate ends on 30 June. He was not, however, one of the two EU special envoys whose mandates were today extended by foreign ministers.

Syria

The ministers’ decision not to issue conclusions on the Middle East resulted in a meeting with few specific outcomes. The most significant other area where there was no change in EU policy was toward the civil war in Syria.

In a heated and protracted meeting last month, foreign ministers agreed to disagree about arming the Syrian rebels, allowing individual members to do so, but making clear that this was not the position of the EU as a whole. Today, debate about Syria was dominated by a discussion about international efforts to bring the two sides in Syria to the negotiating table.

No changes in positions were announced today. The EU’s diplomatic service, the European External Action Service, limited itself to issuing a paper – together with the European Commission – summarising the various strands of the EU’s policy towards Syria.

EU’s Eastern Partnership

There were also exchanges of views on preparations for a summit with the EU’s eastern neighbours in November, which has the potential to become a landmark in the EU’s relations with Ukraine, Moldova, Armenia and Georgia. Foreign ministers from these countries – plus Azerbaijan – are expected to meet their EU counterparts next month. The one specific outcome, agreed in advance, was a renewed outreach to Belarus, whose authoritarian regime is under EU sanctions. EU foreign ministers agreed to suspend a travel ban on the Belarusian foreign minister, Uladzimir Makei, to encourage him to attend the foreign ministers’ meeting in July. EU member states are eager to persuade Belarus to attend November’s Eastern Partnership summit, in the conviction that a decision by Belarus not to attend could in effect end its involvement in the Eastern Partnership programme.

The ministers also discussed the foreign-policy implications of climate change with the European commissioner for climate action, Connie Hedegaard, and Afghanistan’s short- and longer-term security needs with the secretary-general of NATO, Anders Fogh Rasmussen.

Afghans go to the polling stations in presidential and provincial elections next April, and over the course of the next 18 months the international community – chiefly, the US – will remove combat troops. The US is currently trying to conclude an agreement with Afghanistan to maintain a troop presence in the country beyond 2014. Those discussions currently centre on matters related to military bases, telecommunications, transit routes and management of air space.

The principal non-financial contributions in Afghanistan made by the EU as a body – rather than its member states – are a police-training mission and support for efforts to establish the rule of law in the country. The police-training mission is currently due to continue until the end of 2014, but the EU is planning to continue its support beyond 2014.