Paris, 06/06/2000 (Agence Europe) - The President of the Assembly of the Western European Union, Klaus Bühler, highlighted at the opening of the Assembly session the importance of the parliamentary dimension of the European security and defence policy, saying: "We need a parliamentary assembly that is purely European and from which no one in Europe is excluded. And for this reason, neither the European Parliament nor the NATO Parliamentary Assembly can incarnate this parliamentary dimension" (outgoing NATO Assembly President Javier Ruperez said the opposite last week, noting that the WEU Assembly no longer has a "raison d'être": see EUROPE of 1 June, p. 6).
WEU Secretary General Javier Solana stated in his remarks that the Council would take into consideration the Assembly's future role, and that the Feira Summit would take a "big step" towards completion of the different elements of the ESDP. Feira will also adopt the principles governing EU/NATO relations and EU/non-EU allies and candidate country relations and will begin working with the Alliance "on a number of clearly identified issues crucial to the creation of an effective and pragmatic EU-NATO relationship", he said. He went on to add that the summit would examine what "we still need to do before the capabilities-pledging conference this autumn", to meet the "Headline Goal". The WEU will have to define clearly its residual tasks and the structures needed to carry them out, he noted, specifying that this will particularly involve continuing support for armaments co-operation within the Western European Armaments Group, deciding the future of the Institute for Security Studies and the Satellite Centre and planning for "the conclusion of the WEU Military Staff's as the EU Military Staff become operational". There is also a need to find solutions for WEU's international staff, "which I consider an important part of WEU's crisis management legacy", he added. Concerning the determination of WEU members to put their political commitments into action, Mr Solana mentioned the recent decision by London to buy 25 Airbus strategic military transport aircraft and reports that the German Government "would recommend a sharp increase in troops available for crisis management operations".