Paris, 19 April 2005. – Speaking at the Saint Petersburg Interparliamentary Conference commemorating the 60th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, which took place on 14 and 15 April 2005 at the seat of the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) Interparliamentary Assembly, WEU Assembly President Stef Goris said that European and CIS countries were facing growing and excessive nationalism. He deplored the fact that “some young people are acting as if they belong to a superior race, exactly as the Nazis did before them”. He called upon parliaments and governments to encourage young people to learn languages, give them the possibility to travel and get to know other young people with different origins, cultures and religions.
 

In his speech, which is available on the Assembly’s website, President Goris also underlined the Assembly’s willingness to continue the “substantial dialogue on security and defence issues, including the economic aspects of security” with the members of the CIS Assembly. Referring to the growing importance of crisis-management activities, he told an audience of about 200 parliamentarians from the eleven (1) member states of the CIS Assembly: “I know that the security and armaments industry in your countries has the potential to come up with convincing solutions for the capability needs we all share. The European Union is interested in involving partner countries in its operations. I therefore encourage you to put concrete proposals to Brussels about the capacities you have and which could, under certain conditions, be made available for crisis-management operations”.
 

President Goris had a bilateral meeting with the President of the CIS Assembly and of the Russian Federated Council, Sergey Mironov, during which steps for further cooperation between the two Assemblies were discussed.
 

At their request, President Goris also met the Speaker of the National Assembly of Armenia, Artur Bagdasaryan, who announced the Armenian Parliament’s interest in establishing closer relations with the WEU Assembly, and with Gennady Novitskiy, Speaker of the National Assembly of Belarus.
 

During the meeting, President Goris told Mr Novitskiy that the Belarusian parliamentary elections had not met European standards and had resulted in the exclusion of opposition candidates. He added that the European Union could not engage in cooperation with Belarus until it received a positive signal that the Belarusian authorities were willing to apply the minimum prerequisites of democracy in the country’s political system. He believed this was in the interest of the citizens of Belarus, who should not be excluded from the European family as a result of the government’s policy.
 

The two-day conference included a joint meeting of the Assembly’s Presidential Committee, the CIS Assembly’s Committees for Politics and International Cooperation and for Defence and Security and the Council of Europe’s External Relations Subcommittee during which a lively debate on terrorism took place. Jean-Guy Branger (France, Federated Group) gave a presentation on the need for “Cooperation to limit nuclear weapons proliferation and to forestall and eliminate the consequences of disasters with technical or technological causes”.
 

Pedro Agramunt (Spain, Federated Group), Chairman of the Assembly’s Political Committee, chaired one of the three conference working groups. It examined “the importance of interparliamentary cooperation in responding to future challenges for international security and democracy”. The working group adopted four amendments which were appended to the final declaration issued at the close of the conference.

(1) Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan