Brussels, 08/04/2008 (Agence Europe) - Addressing the European Parliament foreign affairs committee on Tuesday 8 April, the high representative for the CFSP provided a broad sweep of the main international issues including:
Serbia. Javier Solana hammered home the fact that the EU “wants Serbia to come closer”. The 11 May general elections are in the firing line. Solana added that they had to do the impossible to provide “a very, very clear signal to the Serbs”. He added that they needed to support pro-European forces in Serbia and create “the conditions for them to be able to work with us to obtain as many votes as possible”. It is therefore necessary for the EU to “make all the efforts” necessary to get the Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA) signed by the time of the elections.
Tibet/China. Although the EP is expected to adopt a resolution on the subject on Thursday 10 April, Mr Solana said that resolving the question of Tibet was not so much a question of adopting a common position on a possible boycott on the Olympic Games (OG) opening ceremony (EUROPE 9629). Mr Solana expressed “personal feelings” for going to Peking on 8 August. He also said that when they had mixed the OG and politics in the past, the outcome had not been not very positive. Nonetheless, he did say that if there were an EU position in favour of a boycott, “I will be the first to apply it”. He called for keeping up the pressure on the Chinese authorities to engage in constructive dialogue with the Dalai Lama.
Middle East. The day after the meeting between the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert and the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, on Monday 7 April in Jerusalem, Mr Solana was not excessively optimistic but saw this meeting as progress towards the political plan. The high representative said that they had little chance of seeing the peace process initiated in Annapolis being completed by the end of the year but “if by the summer there has been no progress, the horizon of 2008 for the solution of conflicts will become more distant”. Although the situation is “a little less tense”, Lebanon still does not have a president. After 17 postponements of the presidential elections, “our acts of encouragement should be pursued so that these elections are organised as soon as possible”.
Zimbabwe. This is an “important” day for Zimbabwe because on Tuesday the High Court is expected to examine the question of publishing the presidential election results of 29 March. African leaders, particularly the president of Tanzania and the president of the African Union (AU) are concerned at not being able to enter into contact with Robert Mugabe. Mr Solana affirmed that, “an observation mission for a second election round will be essential” if there is a second round in the presidential elections. The possibility for such a mission, that could be jointly carried out by the EU and AU or separately, was also at the heart of the discussions that the high representative is expected to have on
Tuesday with the president of the AU commission, Jean Ping, who was visiting Brussels.
Afghanistan. The EUPOL mission in Afghanistan consists of 195 legal and police experts and is expected to be deployed in full by the end of the month, explained Solana, who also indicated that he would be going to Kabul then Islamabad next week.
Chad. The deployment of the EUFOR Chad/DRC continues. 1700 people are in the field (out of the expected 3700). Solana explained that they had not experienced any problems on the ground.
Iran. Nothing new since the most recent UN resolution but “the unity of the international community remains intact”. (A.B.)