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EU to deal with Russia, ME, enlargement plan this week

BRUSSELS: European Union enlargement, Russia and the Middle East are on the bill on Monday and Tuesday as European Union foreign ministers meet here to forge a six-month action plan under Portugal's new EU presidency.

Picking up a carryover mandate from last month's Helsinki summit, the General Affairs Council will be figuring ways of pressuring Russia to seek a political resolution to the fighting in separatist Checnhya, while at the same time maintaining a working relationship with Moscow.

Monday's Council meeting will be the first since Boris Yeltsin's surprise New Year's Eve resignation and his replacement by interim president Vladimir Putin pending March 26 elections.

"The Council will reiterate its concerns about the continuing violence in Chechnya and repeat its condemnation of the indiscriminate use of force by the Russian authorities," said a Portuguese spokesman.

Last November the European Parliament urged a freeze on the EU's TACIS aid programme Ñ worth some 450 million euros (dollars) this year Ñ until Russia stopped attacks that jeopardised civilians in Chechnya.

Helsinki took it a step further, limiting TACIS funding in 2000 to "priority areas, including human rights, the rule of law, support for civil society and nuclear safety".

It also called for a review of EU "common strategy on Russia" and a suspension or "strict application" of some provisions of the EU-Russia Partnership and Cooperation Agreement, measures on the agenda here on Monday and Tuesday.

The EU role in the Middle East peace process will be a focus of day one, with the 15 ministers lunching with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, due here after having met with President Bill Clinton in Washington last week.

They will also get a report from Portuguese Foreign Minister Jaime Gama on his Middle East tour with EU foreign policy and security chief Javier Solana last week. The pair visited Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, the West Bank and Egypt.

Israeli minister for regional cooperation, Shimon Peres, said here on Friday, after talks with EU Commission President Romano Prodi and foreign affairs commissioner Chris Patten, that a regional economic accord had been formulated.

Peres stressed the EU would have to play a "principal role" in forging an economic peace because "a diplomatic peace will not hold water in the Middle East".

An EU spokesman also hinted at a get-tough policy on aid to the Palestinians, which totalled over two billion euros (dollars) for the 1994-98 period. The EU is demanding more transparency, stricter management and better value for money of its aid to Arafat's Palestinian Authority.

The council will be setting up initial ministerial meetings for next month with six countries waiting to begin EU membership talks Ñ Bulgaria, Lativia, Lithunia, Malta, Romania and Slovakia.

It will be shooting for substantial progress" in negotiations already underway with six others Ñ Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Poland and Slovenia.

And it will be taking a closer look at Turkey, accepted at Helsinki as a membership candidate, but with strict conditions relating to human rights and contentions with EU-member Greece.

The General Affairs council will also be taking preliminary steps toward setting up a year-long Inter-governmental Conference tasked with making the institutional changes needed to accommodate all those new members while avoiding the administrative paralysis of too many hands on the tiller.

It will consider the western Balkans, possibly with a view to extending the EU's "energy for democracy" programme in Serbia to include additional cities controlled by the opposition.

And it will get the Portuguese presidency's views on a key Helsinki mandate, the formation over the next three years of a 50,000-troop European rapid reaction force designed to jump into Kosovo-like crises independent of the US-dominated Nato. AFP