Mogherini: you are talking about appointments, I am focused on dossiers only

Federica Mogherini isn’t thinking about possible appointments. Not now, at least. She prefers thinking about work, without having a spotlight lit on her, allowing the Italian government to run negotiations in the most appropriate way. She chose understatement when talking about the possibilty of being Catherine Ashton’s successor as High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. “I see you are talking much about it…” she said, with a knowing smile someone read as a sign of Italian ambitions for the post, currently held by the UK. “We haven’t had any news in the last two days,” added the Italian Foreign Minister at the sides of a NATO Ministerial Meeting. “We are working on dossiers, and it’s a very demanding and important commitment, my colleagues and I are focused on this.”

Conventional answers, tactics to turn the attention on something else. She does not speak much because it is more cautious to be careful than to come forward. And Minister Mogherini did not speak up on South Stream either – the pipeline project involving Italian enterprises with Russia, to which NATO closed the door after the Ukrainian crisis. “We can discuss about South Stream in a non-NATO event,” answered Mogherini when asked a comment on the situation. The Italian Minister talked about her mission in Brussels: foreign affairs. “We are aware we need to solve the crisis with Russia, not against it,” given that “this is also the request made by our Ukrainian partner.” Moscow’s involvement “was a message sent by the new Ukrainian Foreign Minister, Pavlo Klimkin, who called us for supporting the peace plan created by Petro Poroshenko, the new President of Ukraine.” Then Iraq, topical dossier as well. It was discussed at high-level at the NATO, and “we agreed we need to take a political approach to the Iraqi situation, no military intervention then.”