25 November General Affairs Council

Date: 28/11/1996

NIGERIA will be subject to EU sanctions for at least another six months. Foreign ministers renewed the Union's ban on arms sales to Lagos, continued the freeze on development aid to the country, and prolonged the visa requirements for Nigerian government officials and their families. The measures were put in place a year ago in response to the hanging of writer and political activist Ken Saro-Wiwa who, with eight other activists, was executed by the government after a closed trial last November. EU governments renewed the sanctions in June, but they needed to go through formalities again to keep them in place.

TRADE Commissioner Sir Leon Brittan's efforts to bring China into the World Trade Organisation were welcomed by ministers. China is the biggest trading country still outside the WTO, and despite EU-China trade disputes, Union governments have expressed an interest in Beijing joining the club. Ministers also urged participants in next month's WTO ministerial meeting in Singapore to push for more ambitious targets than those currently envisaged.

MINISTERS gave the Commission permission to negotiate a global information technology agreement (ITA) on behalf of EU member states. Hopes of a deal suffered a setback earlier this year when the Union refused to discuss the planned liberalisation accord, complaining its exclusion from a US-Japan semiconductor deal would block EU access to Japan's computer-chip market.

THE ministers called on Iran to put an end to threats against German judges from radical Islamic religious leaders. A German court is trying Iranian nationals for the murder of a Kurd, and there have been calls from mosques in Iran for a fatwah, or death sentence, on the judges. The EU called on Tehran to give any necessary protection to German citizens living in Iran.

FOREIGN ministers agreed that they need a “detailed framework for civilian peace implementation” in ex-Yugoslavia next year and supported Foreign Affairs Commissioner Hans van den Broek's view that political and economic conditions should guide the EU's ties with the former Yugoslav republics.

MALTA has frozen its application to join the Union. Foreign Minister George Vella, meeting his Union counterparts for the first time since Maltese elections last month brought in a Labour government opposed to membership, said: “We do not see any importance in withdrawing our application. For the moment we are putting it in the deep freeze.” He said that Malta wanted a non-official, but mutually-beneficial, relationship with the Union. The 'structured dialogue' between the two sides has been suspended.

THE EU will keep an envoy on Cyprus. The incoming Dutch EU presidency invited Kester Heaslip to continue in the role of presidency representative for Cyprus.

THE Union is having Turkey for dinner. Ministers invited Turkish Premier Necmettin Erbakan to join Union heads of state and government for dinner on 14 December during the European summit in Dublin.

WORRIED about the recent referendum vote in Belarus for a new constitution giving President Alexander Lukashenko vast authoritarian powers, EU ministers asked him to stick to democratic and economic reforms and not to consider the vote legitimate.