Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-10-24-Speech-3-378"
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"en.20071024.41.3-378"2
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"Mr President, I should like to thank Mr Borrell Fontelles for putting this oral question to us. I am glad because I think this is an opportunity for us to comprehensively answer this question on something which has particularly appalling consequences. It has a highly negative impact on human beings, particularly on civilians. The question is, therefore, very dear to me because things that affect human security are always very close to my heart. I fully agree with the position expressed by our Council President, but I would like to mention a few other things also.
At the same time, the Commission closely follows the Oslo Process and intends to participate as an observer at the meetings planned in that context in Brussels and in Vienna.
In conclusion, I would like to assure you, Mr Borrell Fontelles, and also the European Parliament, that the Commission will continue to make its best efforts to support all the multilateral initiatives that are aimed at a comprehensive and effective ban on cluster mines.
Over the past year I have had the opportunity to discuss it in several formal and informal fora, including in meetings organised – the first in Paris and then a later one in Alexandria – by the Institute for Peace Studies and chaired by Ms Mubarak. She took on this issue very strongly and I think she has tried to bring things forward. As in the case for antipersonnel landmines, explosive remnants of war pose great threats to the lives and safety of civilian populations and I would like to comprehensively answer the questions that Mr Borrell Fontelles has asked here.
Their effects can be both immediate and long-lasting. By scattering explosives over wide areas they can kill and injure, as we all know, large numbers of civilians, very often children. In addition, many of the bomblets or submunitions fail to implode and to explode on impact, and their lethal effects remain after conflict so furthermore cluster munitions seriously hinder international humanitarian assistance. We have seen it in the war in Lebanon.
As regards crisis management and post-conflict reconstruction programmes during and in the aftermath of conflicts over the past several years, we in the Commission have been very active in countering the problems created by landmines and also by other explosive remnants of war, including cluster ammunition.
Through the two European Commission mine action strategies covering the period 2002-2007, over EUR 300 million have been committed worldwide in projects covering activities such as demining, stockpile destruction, mine risk education, mine victim assistance, rehabilitation and social economic reintegration. Projects covering cluster munitions have also been carried out in countries which are highly affected by these weapons, such as Afghanistan, Laos and Cambodia to name a few of them.
As for the future, we will maintain our engagement through mainstreaming actions against antipersonnel landmines and explosive remnants of war in our Community external assistance strategies and programmes – so this will be everywhere.
The Commission also makes use of the humanitarian aid instrument managed by ECHO to fund humanitarian demining efforts. The most recent case of humanitarian demining support has been in Lebanon, which received significant humanitarian aid following the conflict in December 2006, which I mentioned before.
Concerning the Commission’s role in the negotiation of disarmament treaties or conventions, I would like to recall that such negotiations are sometimes not in our competence. If the Community is not a party to the disarmament treaties or conventions, it can then legally only encourage partner countries to engage fully in multilateralism, in particular via participation in treaties and conventions. I think our President has said a lot on this already.
We took part in the EU troika démarches carried out in key countries such as the United States of America, Japan, Brazil, South Korea, Canada, Pakistan and Ukraine, to promote the multilateral initiatives on cluster munitions in the framework of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, and in particular a negotiation on a legally binding instrument addressing humanitarian concerns about cluster munitions. The objective is to conclude negotiations by the end of next year."@en1
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