At dawn last night, all traffic passing through Washington Square South was obstructed by security officers who blockaded the street. The angry taxi drivers probably cursed those damn Gossip Girl kids who always pick the worst time to shoot on location, but the blockade wasn’t for Penn Badgley or Leighton Meester. Instead, it was for Bernard Kouchner and Miguel A. Moratinos – the Foreign Ministers of France and Spain respectively – who are in town for the UN General Assembly’s summit on the Millennium Development Goals. Last night, the pair arrived at Kimmel’s Rosenthal Pavilion to discuss a completely different topic: the role of the European Union in the Middle East peace process.

If you just asked yourself what role?, you’re not alone.

“We were a bit surprised not to be part of the game,” said French Minister Kouchner about the Middle East peace talks organized by President Obama (who’s also in town for the UN summit). Kouchner called for deeper cooperation between the United States and the European nations in bringing peace to the region. He pointed to the unifying establishment of the EU after World War II as the lesson that Europe wants to reproduce in the Middle East. “We must be part of the peace process,” he said.

“What we want is to move forward,” said Moratinos, insisting that he is not pro-Israel or pro-Palestine, but “pro-peace.”

If you have no idea what all this is about, you can learn more about the whole conflict by reading The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Middle East Conflict and by not watching a complete idiot’s History of the Middle East in a Couple of Minutes.