Washington, 26/02/2002 (Agence Europe) - At a joint press conference held after the 25 February meetings in Washington between the President of the EU Council of Ministers Josep Pique and the US Secretary of State Colin Powell, the latter announced that a top level EU/US meeting - between President Bush and the President of the European Council, Mr Aznar, in Washington on 2 May. He also mentioned "my hope that the Minister and I will get together before then at a ministerial level to make sure we do have a good and successful summit". A meeting to prepare for the summit has been scheduled for April.
Mr Powell said "I had a chance to explain to the Foreign Minister the context in which the President made his remarked" (in the State of the Union address) "about the nature of those three countries that were so prominently figures in the President's speech - Iran, Iraq and North Korea. And we have a common understanding that we all have to be concerned about countries that have regimes that can legitimately be called evil, that develop weapons of mass destruction that might get into the hands of terrorist or might be used by these despotic regimes. There is no question that we have a common view about it. And I also reinforced to the Foreign Minster that no US policies have changed in recent weeks". Josep Pique said that "Our points of view on absolutely every topic are not always 100 % congruent, but the amount of harmonies extremely, extremely high… What we intend to do is to continue emphasising what brings us together, what united us, and not emphasising the things that separate us, which are very, very few indeed".
Mr Pique said he has discussed the situation in Latin America with Mr Powell (particularly Colombia, Ed) and the Middle East. Mr Powell said he appreciated the work the EU does with respect to the Middle East. Asked about a partial lifting of Yasser Arafat's restrictions of movement, Mr Pique said "I think that if we ask for 100% of efforts in order to fight against terrorism, we have to guarantee 100% capacity to do that. This is a clear position of the European Union".