Sumario: July 15, 2002: Highlights. Middle East, ICC/Bosnia, European Parliament, ECOSOC, African Union, and more….
Welcome to the official e-mail alert service of the European Union at the United Nations.
We are changing our website hosting company and expect new documents to be put on our website: http://www.eu-un.europa.eu towards the end of the week. In the meantime, the latest news is summarized as follows:
Tomorrow, the Quartet (the EU, Russia, UN and USA) meets in New York to discuss the Middle East peace process and especially steps being taken to reform the Palestinian Authority. The EU side is being represented by Danish EU Presidency Foreign Minister Per Stig Moller, European Commissioner Chris Patten and High Representative Javier Solana.
In a statement to the UN Security Council, the EU Presidency said that the Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) is a major leap forward in the progressive development of international law. An abrupt end to the UN International Police Force in Bosnia would have created a vacuum. The EU had indicated that if necessary it would have taken measures to avoid a gap in the international
police presence in Bosnia. The Security Council has agreed on an extension of the UNMIBH mandate until 31 December paving the way for the EU to take over on 1 January.
In a speech in Berlin, H.R. Javier Solana said that he hoped the United States would think again and let the Court prove its worth. The ICC was designed to constrain, prevent, deter and punish the actions of would-be criminals, not of peace-keepers. In an article in the Washington Post this week, Commissioner Chris
Patten said that the US had demanded elaborate safeguards in the Rome Conference that prepared the ICC : "Why should people make concessions to America if the United States is going to walk away in any case?"
In the high level segment of ECOSOC last week, Danish State Secretary Carsten Staur said that human resources development was an extremely important tool to provide developing countries with the necessary capacity to reach the ambitious Millennium Development Goals. In another statement, EC Director-General Koos
Richelle said that the weakness and inadequacy of governance structures at the global as well as regional and national levels were hampering the transformation of policies into results in the area of health and education.
The EU warmly welcomed the inauguration of the African Union in Durban. With this historic event, the EU Presidency declared that African nations have taken an important step towards creating a stronger and more coherent framework for peace, stability, good governance and economic development in Africa. In a separate statement, EC President Romano Prodi said that the AU is largely modeled on the European integration and that the Commission has confirmed its commitment to offer concrete support to the process of establishing the AU particularly with respect to its peace and security mechanism and to strengthen its institutional capacity in the transition period. The Commission also offered to finance a pilot-project on NEPAD capacity building.
In Strasbourg this week, the European Parliament passed a resolution on the outcome of the UN World Food Summit in which it urged EU institutions - working with the World Food Programme and other international donors - to draw up an emergency plan to tackle the growing crisis of famine and food shortages now facing around 14 million Africans. In another resolution, Members of the European Parliament
continued to show their concern about the situation in Zimbabwe, calling upon all African leaders to adopt a more assertive stance, particularly in the context of their NEPAD commitments.
In Geneva, Ambassador Carlo Trojan made a statement about the implementation of the information society within the EU. He said that the development of a coherent and focused e-strategy, coupled with commitments at the highest political level, have proven essential. The opening up of markets, full liberalization and the development and rigorous reinforcement of a pro-competitive regulatory framework
for the telecommunications sector was also an important factor.
The European Commission announced it will give over EUR 3 million in aid to Timor, China and Haiti. For further information please click here. It also signed an aid package for EUR 596 million with Nigeria for the period 2002-2007.
Please note this email alert service will start again in early September. For the latest up-to-date positions of the EU at the UN, please continue to refer to the EU @ UN website during this period.
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