From owner-imap@chumbly.math.missouri.edu Tue Jul 23 13:30:06 2002
Date: Mon, 22 Jul 2002 00:09:25 -0500 (CDT)
From: Weekly News Update <wnu@igc.org>
Subject: Weekly News Update #651, 7/21/02
Article: 142506
To: undisclosed-recipients:;
Delegations from 63 countries met at the Third Afro-Caribbean Pacific (ACP) Group Summit on July 17-19 in Fiji, primarily to discuss the Cotonou Accord signed by the European Union (EU) in 2000, which offers $12.7 billion in aid to the ACP member states over the next five years if they improve human rights conditions and curb corruption. But EU trade commissioner Pascal Lamy made it clear that Cuba, a new member of the ACP [see Update #513], would not receive a share of the aid; the EU claims that Cuba does not meet the human rights requirements. Barbadian vice prime minister Billie Miller, spokesperson for the Caribbean group at the summit, said that the Caribbean nations had formally asked the EU to include Cuba in the Cotonou Accord. [El Nuevo Herald (Miami) 7/19/02 from AP]
Dominican vice president Milagros Ortiz Bosch inaugurated the summit with a formal proposal that all foreign debt owed by member states be cancelled to allow for greater investment in education, health and other infrastructure works. The cancellation of foreign debt should be considered not merely a possibility but the only option for such states as the Dominican Republic, she said. [Hoy (Santo Domingo) 7/19/02] The ACP nations planned to use the summit to plan strategies for negotiations with the EU in Brussels starting in September. The EU is phasing out its trade preferences for former European colonies, in accordance with World Trade Organization (WTO) standards. The ACP nations want to slow the process down, while the EU says that the Cotonou accord already compensates the ACP for the loss of trade preferences. [Financial Times (London) 7/17/02]