PARIS - French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Sunday urged the disparate and conflict-prone countries around the Mediterranean Sea to make peace as European rivals did in the 20th century, as he launched an unprecedented Union for the Mediterranean.

"The European and the Mediterranean dreams are inseparable," Sarkozy told leaders from more than 40 nations in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. "We will succeed together; we will fail together."

The union Sarkozy championed as a pillar of his presidency brought together around one table for the first time dignitaries of such rival nations as Israel and Syria, Algeria and Morocco, Turkey and Greece.

Coping with age-old enmities involving their peoples and others along the Mediterranean shores will be a central challenge to the new union encompassing about 800 million people.

"We will build peace in the Mediterranean together, like yesterday we built peace in Europe," Sarkozy said. He insisted the new body would not be "north against south, not Europe against the rest ... but united."

Sarkozy went to special efforts to bring Syria into the international fold for the summit: President Bashar Assad met both Lebanese President Michel Suleiman and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, separately, for the first time. And he met Sarkozy, after years of chilly relations between their countries.

Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak, co-presiding with Sarkozy, said the union has better chances of success than a previous cooperation process launched in Barcelona in 1995 because the new body focuses on practical projects parallel to efforts toward Mideast peace.

Mubarak called on the new union to tackle reducing the wealth "gap" between north and south, and cited other southern Mediterranean "challenges" as education, food safety, health and social welfare.

Algeria's President Abdelaziz Bouteflika said he hopes the union will make it easier for North Africans to receive visas for Europe. "Our common sea should bring us closer together, not separate us," the president said in an interview with official Algerian news agency APS.

He also questioned whether the union would have enough money to get things done and whether "the EU really wants to contribute to bringing southern Mediterranean countries up to speed."

Merkel called Sunday's meeting "a very good start."

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