Cape Town, 19/03/2002 (Agence Europe) - The Development Cooperation Department within the Belgian Foreign Ministry decided to launch a programme for training ACP parliamentarians on the subject of the new ACP-EU partnership agreement, it was learnt on the fringe of the Joint Parliamentary Assembly in Cape Town, South Africa. The programme is addressed to all countries with which Belgian cooperation is important: Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Côte d'Ivoire, Ethiopia, Mali, Mozambique, Niger, Rwanda, South Africa, Uganda, Senegal and Tanzania. The two-day seminars, with speeches by the head of the European Commission delegation, the Belgian attaché and specialists aim to: - brief parliamentarians on the new stakes of the Cotonou Agreement and the changes compared to the Lomé Conventions, mainly regarding the participation of civil society in the implementation of cooperation; - explore the practical implications of such changes for the African countries; - clarify the role of national parliaments in the management and control of national cooperation programmes; - promote constructive dialogue between parliamentarians and other State and non-State players in relation to national priorities; - examine the road for better cooperation between the national parliaments and the Joint Parliamentary Assembly. The first seminar will be held mid-May in Niger.