30/01/2003 (Agence Europe) - Austria is proposing that the Fifteen draw up a list of safe third countries (twelve candidate countries, Switzerland, Iceland and Norway) in a regulation, countries to which asylum seekers ending up on their territory would be sent. According to the Austrian proposal: "Third country nationals who have entered the territory of a Member State after passing through or coming from a third State, which may be held to have a responsibility in receiving or readmitting those persons, and who apply for asylum in the Member State fall under the responsibility of the third State for examining their asylum applications, if this is a safe third State". For the purposes of the Regulation, a safe third State is one which has ratified the Geneva Convention on the Status of Refugees and the Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees and the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and at least its protocols 6 and 11, or the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and the first Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The proposal appeared in the Official Journal C17 of 24 January 2003.