Brussels / Washington, 20/09/2001 (Agence Europe) - During the ministerial meeting on Thursday in Washington, the European Troika gave Colin Powell confirmation of the Union's full support following last week's terrorist attacks, while inviting him to take cooperation further to be able to fight terrorism "as never before", that is, more than the strong and immediate counterattack that such acts call for. Chris Patten, Javier Solana and Louis Michel also hoped to be able to clarify the European Council, on Friday (see above), on the operational details of the "world campaign" that the White House has vowed to conduct against those behind the attacks. A joint declaration, carefully negotiated right up to the last moment, was to seal the concrete decisions taken to make anti-terrorist instruments an effective and operational weapon on every front.
Shortly before his departure for Washington, Chris Patten called upon the transatlantic partners via the press to cooperate as never before, within the UN and in other international organisations, in order to destroy the terrorists' hiding places, starve them out and penetrate and destroy their networks, but without forgetting to deal with the breeding ground that nurtures "men of violence and hate", that is to say, the "divisions and inequalities of this world".
In a letter, jointly drafted with the Commissioner for Justice and Home Affairs, Antonio Vitorino, Mr Patten sets out his ideas. The text that President Prodi is himself to submit to the Heads of State and Government of the Fifteen puts forward a series of concrete measures generally aimed at speeding up implementation and strengthening of operational CFSP and JHA instruments. A series of urgent measures have been put forward, mainly that of establishing mechanism for the short-term joint assessment of threats, and:
1. provide Europol with the means to co-operate closely with the United States and other key partners, including facilitating access to the information and analyses of national intelligence services, enabling it to actually partake in operational actions as support capacity (possibility mentioned in the Amsterdam Treaty and Conclusion of Tampere), by accelerating the negotiation of a bilateral cooperation agreement between Europool and the United States, developing a Task Force of police commissioners, created by the European council of Tampere.
2. envisage legal mutual assistance at transatlantic level, including regarding extradition (even though the European side is sticking to its refusal to hand over suspects who risk the death sentences in America), hearing of witnesses, interception….
3. examine the urgency of legislation, existing and in the making, on the protection of data, to guarantee the delicate balance between civil liberties and the demands of security, and possibly adding provisions on information, storage and accessibility in the framework of investigations into terrorist and criminal activities.
4. Strengthen the fight against cyber-terrorism, by handing the EU Forum the care of identifying the complementary measures required and accelerating deliberations in Council on actions proposed by the European Commission in view of enhancing the security of networks.
5. Enduring the coherence of instruments against money laundering and the Union's banking directives, as well as work undertaken by groups dealing with terrorism.
6. go further in cooperation against terrorism at international level (UN, G8, Council of Europe, etc.), notably by preparing a concerted approach in view of talks to be held in New York in October on the future United Nations Convention on Terrorism. The Commissioners also suggest persuading Member States that have not signed the Convention against money laundering to do so, and: - to work with the United States to convince third countries to back it, as well as the other 11 UN anti-terrorism conventions; - to envisage consolidating the many international conventions and other relevant texts; - to begin with the United States a follow-up to the Convention on light weapons (including on the places of sales and destination of these weapons), that could develop into international action; - ensure to avoid the proliferation of dual purpose products and technologies and step-up joint Community, bilateral and multilateral action in the field; - deploy greater resources for the fight against the illegal production and trafficking in drugs to, among other things, bar terrorists access to this source of revenue; - examine implementation of the Community penal policy; - check the effectiveness of controls on entries and visas.