Brief items for which space was lacking in earlier editions
***Austria/Portugal: The Office of Austrian President Thomas Klestil has released a letter from Antonio Guterres (responding to Mr Klestil's letter of 21 March last) in which the Portuguese Prime Minister repeats that the bilateral sanctions by the Fourteen against Vienna "do not affect Austrian cooperation in EU institutions or contacts with citizens". The Portuguese Presidency, states the letter, will ensure that "the dignity of Austrian representatives attending EU meetings is not affected".
*** Austria/Belgium: Austria's Defence Minister Herbert Scheibner (member of Jörg Haider's FPÖ), stated in an interview published by Format magazine that, if the Belgians want no further military contacts with Austria, he does not see why "we still authorise them to transport military material via our territory or to use our air space". These declarations "will do nothing to change" the decisions by Belgian Defence Minister André Flahaut, commented the latter's spokesman (Mr Flahaut announced in February the suspension of military cooperation with Austria).
*** Spain: In his inaugural speech before the Spanish Parliament, José Maria Aznar set the objective of full employment in the course of this decade and announced that he would "immediately" ask the Spanish Parliament to ratify the Treaty creating the International Criminal Tribunal. In the new Aznar govenrment, former Industry Minister Josep Piqué becomes Foreign Minister and former Speaker of Congress Federico Trillo becomes Defence Minister; Rodrigo Rato remains Economy Minister (but the Finance Ministry is no longer coupled with the Economy, and is now headed by Cristobal Montoro). Former MEP Miguel Arias Canete is Agriculture Minister.
*** EU/Sudan: At a meeting with the EU Ambassadors and representatives in Khartoum (as part of the dialogue on human rights in Sudan, which resumed this year between Khartoum and the EU), Sudan's Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs Awad al-Karim Fadlullah called on the European Union to put pressure on the rebels in the southern part of the country to accept a ceasefire. The Under-Secretary pointed out that the government this month ordered a complete halt to the bombings against civilians in the southern part of the country.
*** EP/Tunisia: The Chair of the Socialist Group in the European Parliament, Enrique Baron, has asked the Tunisian government to review its position on Tunisian journalist Taoufik Ben Brik, who is on a hunger strike in protest of the decree by authorities of his country prohibiting him from writing and the refusal to renew his passport. Such measures are incompatible with Article 2 of the EU/Tunisia Association Agreement, writes Baron. Olivier Dupuis (elected on the Bonino list) has also once again denounced human rights violations in Tunisia, calling for the suspension (already requested, he notes, by MEPs Hélène Flautre and Harlem Désir) of this agreement which "has been transformed from a model agreement into a parody".
*** EP/EPP: The Chair of the EPP Group in the European Parliament, Hans-Gert Pöttering, last week visited the United States, where he met: at the Pentagon, the official for European Affairs and NATO, Lisa Bronson; at the State Department, Under-Secretaries of State Thomas Pickering and Marc Grossman; at the National Security Council, Tony Blinken, Special Assistant to President Clinton for European affairs.
*** EU/Commission: Paul van Buitenen, the European civil servant whose revelations led to the resignation of the Santer Commission, was appointed a member of the Orange-Nassau Order by the Queen of the Netherlands at a ceremony in Luxembourg, where he is employed in the European Commission's financial services. Mr Van Buitenen, who first was suspended and sanctioned for having revealed cases of fraud in a report submitted to Members of the EP, said he considered his "honour" restored with this decoration.
*** EU/Mercosur: The European Commission representative in Argentina and the President-in-Office of the joint Mercosur Parliamentary Committee have signed a two-year financing convention of EUR 1.3 million (of which EUR 917,000 out of the EU budget) for the modernisation of the organisation and operation of this Committee, which brings together MPs from the four Mercosur countries. The aid will finance, inter alia, the installation of a documentation centre linked to the documentation centres of the European Parliament and the European Commission.
*** EU/Transport: According to a poll conducted by the International Tourism Alliance and the International Car Federation, the results of which were published last week, the safety of 8 out of 25 European tunnels is "poor" or "very poor": the two most dangerous tunnels are Alfonso XIII, west of Andorra, and Tunnel Fornaci, on the Italian Riviera.