The minutes of the last meeting have been circulated. As far as I am aware there are no problems with them.
Business of Joint Committee.
Chairman, I wish to raise an issue. It does not arise directly from the minutes but it will not take long. There is a bilateral EU agreement on co-operation with Chile which must be ratified by the Irish Parliament. I was contacted by the new Chilean ambassador. Will somebody report back at the next meeting with a timetable for that?
I understand we have not received anything from the Department of Foreign Affairs.
Could we initiate an inquiry?
Yes.
Will you send me a letter?
We are all meeting the Chilean ambassador, so we will all want the same letter.
That is no problem. The Senator is doing his own constituency work. His constituency does not even have a coastline.
It does.
I would like to note correspondence received from the chairmen of the foreign affairs committees of the Croatian Parliament and of the Parliament of the Czech Republic formally inviting this committee to visit their respective countries. I hope we will be in a position to take up these invitations later in the year.
The next item refers to EU scrutiny. At its last meeting, the Subcommittee on European Scrutiny considered a draft proposal falling within the remit of the Department of Foreign Affairs. The proposal is Council Regulation COM(2002)775 regarding the interruption of certain economic relations with Angola in connection with activities of UNITA. Since independence from Portugal in 1975, there has been an almost constant state of civil war in Angola and it is estimated that almost 1.5 million people lost their lives during this conflict. As part of the efforts to end the conflict, certain sanctions were taken by the UN against UNITA, the main rebel group fighting against the Government of Angola. The ambassador of Ireland to the UN chaired the sanctions committee.
Following the death of the leader of UNITA, Jonas Savimbi, a memorandum of understanding was signed between the government and UNITA in April 2002. In response to the positive political developments in Angola and further to an amending resolution of the UN in December 2002, the proposed regulation aims to repeal Regulation (EC) No. 2229/97 which imposed the sanctions against UNITA. The consequence of this action in Ireland would see the lifting of the assets freeze imposed on UNITA officials in this country. The subcommittee has recommended that no further scrutiny is necessary given that the proposal has a UN basis and is part of efforts to underpin the peace process in Angola. Does the committee agree with this recommendation? Agreed. I think everyone will be happy that has taken place.
We will now invite the witnesses in. Ethiopia is a priority and we want to develop a type of "project Ethiopia" to pull together all facets and the information. We had a good contribution from Concern. We have invited all the groups to come in, to make a short contribution and to give us short papers. We will pull all the information together and make a worthwhile contribution on the Ethiopian effort.
What is the timeframe?
Each person will have roughly three to four minutes and then we will have questions.
I would be grateful if members were informed of any follow up under item 8. I did not get the chance to mention it because you moved along very quickly. It is a particularly significant item.
We have not had the chance to meet the working group.
I appreciate that. It should be kept on the burner.
Okay.