EU foreign ministers strongly condemned Monday the misuse of European passports by the killers of a Hamas commander in Dubai, as their Israeli counterpart faced tough questioning in Brussels. “We strongly condemn the use of fraudulent EU member states' passports and credit cards acquired through the theft of EU citizens' identities,” the foreign ministers said in a statement drawn up during a meeting in Brussels. “We are extremely concerned that European passports... can be used in a different manner for a different purpose,” Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, told reporters as he arrived for the meeting. Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman was to meet Moratinos and other European foreign ministers during the day, seeking to convince them that the Jewish state had no connection with the use of British, Irish, French and German passports by the killers of Hamas commander Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh in January. While the EU foreign ministers were not talking about Mossad by name, it was clear that the spotlight was on Israel's secret service, which has used fake passports in previous operations. Britain, Ireland, France and Germany last week called in Israeli envoys for talks at their foreign ministries after passports from those countries were implicated in the killing. British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, who was to meet Lieberman Monday, urged the Israelis to cooperate “fully” in investigating the incident. Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn said Monday the culprits must be punished, stressing that such political assassinations “have no place in the 21st century.”
