BRUSSELS: EU foreign ministers will discuss extending the bloc’s Red Sea naval mission to help reopen the strategically vital Strait of Hormuz, the bloc’s top diplomat Kaja Kallas said. “It is in our interest to keep the Strait of Hormuz open, and that’s why we are also discussing what we can do in this regard,” Kallas told journalists heading into the Brussels talks.
An option on the table would be to change the mandate of the EU’s naval mission in the Red Sea, Operation Aspides, Kallas said. She suggested this would be the “fastest” way for the 27-member bloc to boost security in the Strait of Hormuz, where Iranian retaliatory attacks to a US-Israeli bombing campaign have largely halted maritime traffic.
“If we want to have security in this region, then it would be easiest to actually already use the operation that we have in the region,” she said. But it remained to be seen whether EU countries were willing to use it to that end, Kallas added. “We will discuss with member states whether it’s possible to really change the mandate of this mission,” she said.
Several capitals indicated they were cold to the idea. “The current mandate of Operation Aspides is correct and does not require any changes,” Spain’s foreign minister Jose Manuel Albares said arriving at the talks. He was echoed by Italy’s Antonio Tajani who expressed scepticism about the feasibility of extending the mission’s mandate, adding Italy preferred a diplomatic solution to the crisis. — AFP
