The Foreign Ministers of Spain, France, Egypt, Tunisia and Jordan assembled to try and get the bogged-down Mediterranean Union back on the right track.

The main motive of the conference and of the dinner afterwards was to look for a consensus on the election of a secretary general with a vision to hold the union’s second summit, planned for June 7 in Barcelona, said an official close to the Spanish department.

Spain, France and the United Kingdom are at the risk of losing their credit rating because of their skyrocketing public debt.

According to the Fitch rating agency, the three nations have to take more secure measures to minimize their public debt otherwise it will reduce their sovereign ratings from AAA, the highest rating available.

Moreover, the agency has predicted that if the three nations public debt keeps increasing at the same speed, it will amount to more than 90% of their GDP by 2011. By contrast, Korea’s public debt stands at 35% of GDP.

Spanish and French troops were ordered to leave an important air base in Kyrgyzstan for missions in Afghanistan this month after the Central Asian nations refused to renew permission for its use.

The deal was turned down by Kyrgyzstan in June and allowed the United States to continue using the Manas air base after Washington agreed to pay more to have access to the facilities.

In the meantime, a nameless diplomat said that Spain temporarily shifted the roughly 60 soldiers and two Hercules C-130 planes which were deployed by it at Manas to Herat in Afghanistan on October 13.