Baron Weidenfeld, at the age of 94 can afford to be dispaasionate! Looking back over the past, he has had an extraordinary life - gambler, opportunist, intellectual and socialite. Few people remember him as the only publisher in England, who dared to defy the censor and take the gamble by publishing Nabokov's novel 'Lolita'. In the 1950s the story of an obsessive sexual relationship between a 12-year-old girl and a middle-aged man was too hot to handle. 'Lolita' became Weidenfeld's first bestseller and was a milestone for his publishing house and for English literature.

Weidenfeld left his native Austria at the time of the Anschluss in 1938 and is no doubt one the living witnesses to the vagaries of World War II and the changes that had taken place in the post-war Europe over the last century.

Today he believes "Europe's Middle East Mission" should be the "simple, fundamental principle": It "should not take sides". Indeed, Europe should remain neutral. Yet the post-war Council of Europe, of which 47 countries are members, is the depositary of the European Convention on Human Rights. Although it is being seen as a talking shop with little power, it feels obliged to criticise human rights abuses in its backyard - the Middle East. Other than mild diplomatic pressure, to halt rights abuses there is not much the EU can do. Nevertheless it is important to raise the issue.

Weidenfeld seems more concerned with EU's foreign policies in the Israel-Palestine conflict than the Shia/Sunni divide in the wider Middle East. Indeed, Israel,for a long time had been frustrated with the EU refusing to see Lebanon's Hezbollah as a terrorist organisation, until last July, when it added the Hezbollah's military wing to its terrorist list.

Moreover Weidenfeld also seems to doubt if "the European media" have been able to "portray the facts accurately and dispaasionately" and help "foster a constructive, fair-minded discussion" in the public, warning that the freedom of expression might just add fuel to the fire.

