Stockholm, 29/01/2004 (Agence Europe) - Taking the floor at the closing ceremony of the conference in Stockholm on "Preventing Genoicde: Threats and Responsibilities", Javier Solana affirmed that the new EU security strategy insists on responsibility. "We have emerged from what many have called a century of genocide", he said, stressing the Union's responsibilities "for past failures but also for the future". "We are beginning to assume greater responsibility for security - in the Western Balkans, for example, and in the Great Lakes region of Africa", he said, adding: "We are prespared to do more". Recalling that the Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh (who was killed last year) had been the first to speak of a "culture of prevention", Mr Solana deplored the "failure to prevent genocide" and recgnised that such a culture requires "the political will and courage to take prventive action where this is costly, dangerous or unpopular and where the benefits may never be seen". After prevention, effective multilateralism is the third aspecdt of the strategy, Mr Solana concluded. He spoke of the setting in place of the Internatioanl Criminal Court, saying: "We have a responsibility also to ensure that the UN can do its job (…) Kofi Annan has spoken openly of its failure to protect in Rwanda and in Srebrenica. That failure is our failure too".