18 May Development Council

Date: 21/05/1998

MINISTERS discussed the less controversial aspects of the next Lomé Convention on relations between the EU and 71 African, Caribbean and Pacific countries. “We confirmed our agreement on a new poverty focus, and the need for simplified and more streamlined disbursement of aid,” said UK Development Minister Clare Short, who chaired the meeting. But they left sensitive trade issues, including plans to start negotiating regional free trade agreements within five years, for foreign ministers to discuss next month.

SHORT said the development ministers' task was not to formulate new policy, but to finds ways of better implementing old policy. The European Commission's Director-General for development Philip Lowe agreed. “This was not about our overall policy objectives, but how to get there,” he said. Ministers called for a tighter focus on poverty reduction which they said should “become the unifying principle which gives coherence to Community and member states' international development efforts”. They also said that gender issues needed to be better integrated into mainstream development policy.

THE Council noted the ACP countries' decision in Barbados to grant Cuba observer status in the Lomé Convention. But it deferred an EU decision on the issue until next month's meeting of foreign ministers.

DROUGHT and conflict were blamed for the plight of more than 350,000 starving people in Sudan. Ministers expressed their “extreme concern”, adding in a statement that: “Long-term food security for the people of Sudan depends on a permanent cease-fire and successful peace negotiations.” The EU would continue to provide assistance “in a flexible manner”, including provisions for the substantial transport costs incurred by aid deliverers. Ministers called on “all donors to continue their assistance through the hunger gap between planting and harvest and in the future, in order to set Sudan on the path to rehabilitation and long-term development”.

DURING a brief discussion of India's nuclear tests, ministers expressed concern but did not agree any concrete response. They did, however, warn against the danger of harming the general population through the use of 'blunt instruments'. “The poor of India should not be made to suffer,” said Short. “There should be efforts to protect assistance to the poor, which can be channelled through non-governmental organisations.”

MINISTERS also briefly discussed Nigeria agreeing, according to Short, that the situation looked “very serious indeed”. They did not discuss rumours that members of the country's ruling junta were flouting visa restrictions by travelling to Paris.