EU ministers' Gaza visit due in early September

(ROME) - Italy's foreign minister Friday said EU ministers would travel to the Gaza Strip in early September to verify Israel's easing of a blockade of the territory.

The visit is "a delicate mission that we are preparing carefully," Franco Frattini said, according to the ANSA news agency.

"We will go to Gaza with a group of European ministers who share with me the need to observe and to help the people who live in Gaza, people who are suffering," Frattini said.

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman last month invited Frattini to lead an EU delegation to Gaza, and last week Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said Frattini and his Spanish and French counterparts would visit in July. Paris later indicated Germany and Britain would also participate.

"Israeli authorities will grant access and will not pose any conditions on the visit, but we are posing one condition: we will not meet with Hamas, but only with the Palestinian Authority," Frattini said.

EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton is to visit Gaza during a three-day Middle East trip that she begins on Saturday.

The European Union has refused to hold direct talks with Hamas since the militant movement won elections in Gaza in 2007.

Israel imposed the blockade in June 2006 after its soldier, Gilad Shalit, was captured by Gaza militants and tightened it after the elections brought Hamas to power.

It has significantly eased the blockade, barring only arms and goods that could be used to build weapons or fortifications, but it has maintained a naval blockade.

The move was in response to international pressure after a naval raid on a flotilla of aid ships trying to run the blockade killed nine Turkish activists.