Press statement by European Union and the Peace and Security Council of the African Union

Press state­ment of the 3rd joint con­sul­ta­tive meet­ing between the Au PSC and the EU PSC
Brus­sels, 18 Octo­ber 2010
(1) The Polit­i­cal and Secu­ri­ty Com­mit­tee of the Euro­pean Union and the Peace and Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil of the African Union held their 3rd Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Meet­ing in Brus­sels.

(2) They dis­cussed the issues of Con­flict Pre­ven­tion and Cri­sis Sit­u­a­tions, where they called on the Sudanese par­ties to remain com­mit­ted to and imple­ment the Com­pre­hen­sive Peace Agree­ment and to make progress regard­ing the con­duct of the ref­er­en­da in Abyei and South Sudan. Both sides empha­sised the impor­tance of these process­es being cred­i­ble and time­ly and stressed that the nego­ti­a­tions on the postre­f­er­en­dum arrange­ments should be pur­sued in good faith. They encour­aged coop­er­a­tion between their respec­tive elec­toral obser­va­tion mis­sions for the ref­er­en­da and to work togeth­er on the post ref­er­en­dum issues. Both sides called on the par­ties to respect the out­come of the ref­er­en­da. An inclu­sive set­tle­ment on Dar­fur in Doha and oth­er process­es such as the Dar­fur ‑Dar­fur-Dia­logue needs to be reached with­out any fur­ther delay and unhin­dered access for human­i­tar­i­an aid needs to be guar­an­teed. Both sides recon­firmed their com­mon resolve to fight impuni­ty and encour­aged all efforts to bring peace, rec­on­cil­i­a­tion and jus­tice to Dar­fur, pledg­ing their full sup­port to the work and the efforts of the AU High Lev­el Imple­men­ta­tion Pan­el for Sudan.

(3) Both sides wel­comed the appoint­ment of the AU High Rep­re­sen­ta­tive for Soma­lia and looked for­ward to the relo­ca­tion of civil­ian com­po­nents of AU and UN to Mogadishu. The meet­ing agreed to urgent­ly fol­low up on the out­come of the 245th meet­ing of the AU PSC held on 15 Octo­ber 2010 and con­curred in call­ing upon the Soma­li polit­i­cal lead­er­ship to improve the func­tion­ing of the Tran­si­tion­al Fed­er­al Insti­tu­tions (TFIs) and advance polit­i­cal dia­logue through an inclu­sive process. They under­scored the impor­tance of strength­en­ing AMISOM and of the build­ing up of Soma­li secu­ri­ty forces along­side a rein­vig­o­rat­ed polit­i­cal approach with­in the frame­work of the Dji­bouti process. In this con­text, they wel­comed the con­tri­bu­tion of the EU Train­ing Mis­sion. They agreed to seek increased engage­ment with the regions of Soma­liland and Punt­land with­in the frame­work of the Tran­si­tion­al Fed­er­al Institutions.

(4) On the issue of Mar­itime Safe­ty and Secu­ri­ty (MSS), both sides wel­comed African efforts in com­ing up with region­al solu­tions to counter pira­cy and look for­ward to the set­ting up of a con­ti­nen­tal frame­work for an inte­grat­ed MSS Strat­e­gy for Africa in line with the con­clu­sions of the work­shop on mar­itime secu­ri­ty and safe­ty held in Addis Aba­ba in April 2010. They wel­comed in par­tic­u­lar the ini­tia­tive of the sec­ond region­al min­is­te­r­i­al meet­ing on pira­cy and mar­itime secu­ri­ty in the East­ern and South­ern Africa-Indi­an Ocean region. On Soma­lia, both sides agreed to explore ways to step up coher­ence in efforts of mar­itime safe­ty and secu­ri­ty on sea and to sta­bi­lize Soma­lia on shore. 

(5) Regard­ing the Peace and Secu­ri­ty Part­ner­ship both sides wel­comed the progress made in the elab­o­ra­tion of the Action Plan 2011–13 under the Joint Africa — EU Strat­e­gy. They stressed the need to rein­force co-oper­a­tion in cri­sis man­age­ment and peace-build­ing, in close co-ordi­na­tion with the UN, also recall­ing the UNSC res­o­lu­tion 1325 on the role of women in peace and secu­ri­ty. To this effect, they wel­comed the efforts made by the AU and Region­al Eco­nom­ic Com­mu­ni­ties to pre­pare a for­ward-look­ing roadmap for the oper­a­tional­i­sa­tion of the African Peace and Secu­ri­ty Archi­tec­ture, as well as the ongo­ing first AU-organ­ised AMANI Africa exercise.

(6) Both sides agreed on the impor­tance of a strength­ened AU-EU coor­di­na­tion in sit­u­a­tions of secu­ri­ty and gov­er­nance crises. Con­cerned by the grow­ing transna­tion­al chal­lenges such as ter­ror­ism, orga­nized crime and traf­fick­ing of all kind, includ­ing inse­cu­ri­ty in the Sahel region, they agreed on the need to assist the efforts of the coun­tries in the region with­in the frame­work of a con­cert­ed and com­pre­hen­sive strate­gic approach. The AU and the EU fur­ther stressed the impor­tance of the sec­ond pres­i­den­tial round in Guinea sched­uled for 24 Octo­ber 2010 and agreed to coop­er­ate as regards their respec­tive elec­toral obser­va­tion mis­sions. Regard­ing Mada­gas­car, both sides reaf­firmed their sup­port to the AU medi­a­tion, called for a more inclu­sive and con­sen­su­al dia­logue and for a rapid return to the con­sti­tu­tion­al order.

(7) Final­ly, both sides agreed to improve their work­ing meth­ods, notably in view of estab­lish­ing reg­u­lar con­tacts between both Chairs of the EU and AU PSC. In the con­text of uncon­sti­tu­tion­al changes of gov­ern­ment, they under­lined the impor­tance of enhanc­ing the effec­tive­ness of Inter­na­tion­al Con­tact Groups as well as of exam­in­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of joint EU-AU declarations/demarches and of coor­di­na­tion con­cern­ing the imple­men­ta­tion of sanctions.

(8) Both sides agreed to meet again in Addis Aba­ba in 2011. 

Source:
Coun­cil of the Euro­pean Union 

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