GENEVA - STABILITY PACT TASK FORCE ENDS SESSION

GENEVA, Oct 19 (Hina) - The Stability Pact task force on democratisation and human rights, which was held in Geneva in the past two days, has not completely met the expectations, Croatia's coordinator for the Stability Pact and Assistant Foreign Minister Vladimir Drobnjak said on Tuesday. "The Geneva meeting has failed to create conditions for a speedy and efficient implementation of concrete projects from the countries in the region", Drobnjak said after the meeting. On the other hand, Croatia can be satisfied that, as was the case with a recent meeting in Oslo, the Euro-Atlantic dimension of the process was stressed and that the doubling of capacities was avoided, i.e. the repeated establishment of human rights protection mechanisms, which already exist within the Council of Europe or the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). According to Drobnjak, Croatia is also satisfied that its draft project on a summit of the parliamentary presidents of the Stability Pact member-countries has received support in principle. A framework date for the summit, suggested by Croatia, is March 2000. The chairman of the Geneva task force, Max van der Stoel, told reporters the meeting had agreed on the establishment of four working groups. These groups would coordinate activities in individual projects from the area of human and minority rights protection, responsible behaviour, the promotion of media freedom and the equality among the sexes. The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is in charge of coordinating refugee return projects, whereas Royaumont is in charge of interparliamentary cooperation. The next meeting was scheduled for January 24, 2000, in Budapest, because Hungary is the next country to take over the six-month-long chairmanship of the Task Force. "Geneva has failed to keep the pace from Oslo and Bari, and especially the pace from Cologne and Sarajevo. Of course, this does not mean that the Pact is losing momentum, but it is obvious that a more pragmatic approach is needed as well as a simplified system of action", Drobnjak said, speaking about the effects of the Stability Pact so far. South-East European countries have taken a notably active approach toward the initial meetings of the Stability Pact and they have even surprised the Pact's special coordinator Bodo Hombach and his team with the number of suggested projects. However, it is now necessary to select the most useful projects and find the best way to implement them, the Croatian delegation believes. Certain differences have been noticed between the United States, which wants to see the dynamics of the process through speedy application of good projects, and the European Union, which has a more bureaucratic approach to the process due to its large membership. US Stability Pact coordinator Daniel Hamilton expressed hope to Croatian reporters that at the beginning of next year a donors' conference for south-east Europe could be organised, with the aim of securing funds for the best projects. Hamilton compared the Stability Pact with the Marshall plan for west Europe, adding the Pact was not only about financial assistance to the region but also about the message that cooperation among the countries in the region is necessary, so that obstacles and mutual open questions could be overcome. This does not mean establishing new institutional frames, because the aim is to enable the countries in the region to draw closer to Euro-Atlantic institutions and each country will progress in line with its own achievements. However, without cooperation among the Pact's member-countries, those aims will be hard to achieve, said Hamilton. According to him, a good example is an agreement between the countries in the region on adopting certain economic regulations which will attract foreign private investments, without which the economies of those countries would hardly be able to survive. (hina) jn rml