Strasbourg, 24/11/2000 (Agence Europe) - As previously indicated, the EP last week called on the EU, in a resolution during its emergency debates, to "strictly subordinate" its participation in the EU-ASEAN meeting of Ministers for Foreign Affairs planned for December in Laos to two conditions: - the freeing of all political prisoners and freedom of movement for Aung San Suu Kyi; - the undertaking by the Burma Junta to engage in a serious dialogue with the National League for Democracy. We do not feel it useful to postpone this meeting, commented European Commissioner Pedro Solbes, when noting that the meetings between the EU and the ASEAN countries are too spaced out; on the contrary he said, we must take advantage to call for answers over the violations of human rights and those of minorities. Furthermore, the Parliament calls on the EU Council to deploy new efforts in order for the visit of an EU Troika, that the Junta decided to postpone, may take place and said it was deeply concerned that, after Afghanistan, Burma has become the world's second largest producer of opium and its by-product heroin. (over the meeting in Vientiane, see yesterday's EUROPE, p.6).
The EP, during the emergence debates, also adopted resolutions on:
The Ivory Coast. The EP hopes that all the political parties can participate in a equitable manner in the legislative elections on 10 December (that the Commission should support in order for them to unfold in accordance with international standards) and it called for a revision of the Constitution which, in the future, should "guarantee presidential elections without the exclusion of candidates on a ethnic basis" (President Gbagbo, invested last October, "ignored all the calls" made for the holding of new Presidential elections open to all, noted the EP). Some MEPs would have wanted to go further, by calling - as was done by the Belgian Christian Democrat Mr Van Hecke - that they organise new Presidential election with the participation of all the candidates, even those that do not satisfy the "Ivorian" criteria. One third of the population in the Ivory Coast originates from Burkina Faso, recalled Mrs Bordes (United Left, France), who strongly criticises the French authorities for having supported a series of authoritarian regimes in this country, to defend "the enormous interests of certain capitalist groups". The French Green Mrs Isler-Beguin denounced the responsibility of the western countries in the "failure" of the economic and social system in the Ivory Coast, and accuses the European Parliament for having plunged into crisis (this country, which was the world's largest producer of cacao, by accepting an excessive percentage of fats in chocolate, to the detriment of cacao).
Vietnam, where a Canadian citizen was recently executed, and where the UN Special Envoy on religious intolerance denounced the persecution of a religious nature. The EP insists in particular on the establishment of an independent judiciary, freedom of opinion and of the press, the abolition of the death penalty, the closure of "re-education" camps, the freeing of all prisoners of conscience. In Vietnam, there has recently been "slight improvements", but not enough, felt the Belgian Radical Mr Dupuis, in calling for the EU to put democracy at the centre of the dialogue with this country, he said, could become "an Asian dragon". As for Commissioner Pedro Solbes, he also recognised that there have been improvements in Vietnam over the last years, and in particular cites the freeing of 23,000 people following an amnesty and the reduction of crimes that came under the death penalty - even if, he underlined, the EU continues to work towards the abolition of the death penalty.
PARLACEN, the Parliament of Central American. The MEPs called on the EU to foresee the necessary credits to enable this Parliament to play a part in the regional integration process, "the it will legitimise", and on their colleagues from Central America to monitor the situation of human rights in their countries. According to them, the PARLACEN is, with ours, the only Parliament where there are seated together MPs directly elected by the citizens of several countries, underlined the Portuguese Socialist Mr Seguro, and Mrs Alvarez Gonzalez (United Left, Spain) felt, that is its competence is reinforced, this Parliament could better defend the citizen's interests.