Council of Europe seeks to redefine its role at Warsaw summit
By JAN SLIVA

AP Worldstream
May 16, 2005

The Council of Europe will seek to redefine its role in the face of an
ever-widening enlargement of the European Union when government leaders
and heads of state meet here at a two-day summit starting Monday.

With democracy and the rule of law firmly established in the 25-member
EU and improving rapidly in the countries waiting at its doorstep,
the continent’s first pan-European political organization now acts
mostly as a human rights watchdog.

But with the European Union planning to establish its own human
rights agency, the Strasbourg, France-based Council of Europe is
asking political leaders to clarify its mandate.

“There must be no double standards, no new dividing lines in Europe.
The European Union should not duplicate our work but use the
experience, institutions and instruments of the Council of Europe,”
said Rene van den Linden, chairman of the Council’s Parliamentary
Assembly.

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, Ukrainian President Viktor
Yushchenko and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan are among
the 46 leaders _ each representing a Council of Europe member state _
taking part in the summit at Warsaw’s Royal Castle.

France will be represented by Foreign Minister Michel Barnier; Britain
is sending Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, and Foreign Minister
Sergey Lavrov is attending for Russia.

Barnier unveiled a monument to Charles de Gaulle, the former French
president, on Sunday in front of the former headquarters of the Polish
communist party’s politburo.

Polish authorities said 10,000 police officers would be deployed to
the capital for the event, in case of terrorist threats and to be
prepared for anti-globalization protests on Monday. The air space in
an 80-kilometer (50-mile) radius around Warsaw will also be closed.

More than 700 journalists were accredited to report on the summit.

The Council of Europe was created in 1949 _ originally to oversee
the democratization of western Europe after the end of World War II
and to standardize member states’ social and legal practices.

It is still the only exclusively European body where such former
Soviet republics as Moldova or Azerbaijan are represented, and is best
known for working to expose breaches of civil liberties and ensuring
that international human rights treaties are being adhered to across
the continent.

However, the EU is planning to launch a human rights agency of its
own by 2007 by expanding the mandate of its anti-racism center.

The Vienna-based European Monitoring Center of Racism and Xenophobia
keeps track of some human rights abuses, and the new agency would
have a wider role and make recommendations on how to protect and
promote human rights.

But with another body, the Organization for Security and Cooperation
in Europe, whose members include the United States and Canada, also
partly fulfilling that role, the Council of Europe is worried its
own role will be diminished.

“There’s a lot of overlapping,” Council of Europe Secretary General
Terry Davis told journalists recently. “We need to establish who
does what.”

Also on the summit’s agenda will be the massive backlog of cases at
the European Court of Human Rights, which is directly supervised
by the Council, and the signing of three new treaties on fighting
terrorism and human trafficking.

The treaty on the prevention of terrorism calls on all European
countries to stop terror groups from recruiting new members, to improve
extradition and mutual assistance arrangements, and to ensure that
victims of terrorist attacks receive government compensation.

A second treaty on the financing of terrorism urges member states
to curb money laundering and ensure quick access to information on
assets held by criminal organizations, including terrorist groups.

The third treaty aims to combat human trafficking and ensure the
protection of victims’ rights.

“With these conventions, we are better armed to fight the evils of
human trafficking and terrorism across Europe,” Davis said. “I call
on all our member and observer states to sign and ratify them … in
order to ensure their speedy entry into force. We cannot wait for
more victims of terrorism and trafficking.”

On the sidelines, the leaders of Turkey and Armenia are expected to
discuss efforts to promote dialogue between the neighboring nations,
which do not have diplomatic relations.

The two countries sharply disagree over the mass killings of Armenians
by Ottoman Turks during World War I, which Armenians say was genocide.