EU-US-summit: EU-US program on disease in Africa to highlight Wednesday summit
Allen Nacheman
Agence France-Presse - May 28, 2000

BRUSSELS, May 28 (AFP) - A common strategy against cyber-crime and a massive EU-US program to fight AIDS, HIV, TB and malaria in Africa and southeast Europe will highlight an EU-US summit in Portugal Wednesday, US and EU officials say.

"We will announce a cooperative effort to fight AIDS and other infectious diseases... and further cooperative efforts in science and technology," said a US official here.

"We are very hopeful we can refer to significant progress on data protection as well on Wednesday," said the official, briefing on condition of anonymity.

European security and defense will also be up for discussion as President Bill Clinton, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and US Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky meet with their EU counterparts in Portugal's National Palace in Queluz near Lisbon.

The summit will be chaired by Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Guterres, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency until June 30.

Also on the EU side will be European Commission President Romano Prodi, commissioner for external relations Chris Patten, and the EU's new security and foreign policy chief Javier Solana, whose telephone answering machine may be at the self-destruct point by then.

Clinton's national security advisor Sandy Berger, briefing reporters at the White House on Thursday, said the EU "is increasingly a partner of ours on security. Henry Kissinger used to say he wished he had one phone number to call in Europe to find out what Europe's foreign policy is.

"Well, now there is, it's Javier Solana, and his phone number is 322-285-5661."

Berger said that in addition to cybercrime and disease prevention, the summit would focus on "the security side on southeast Europe, the Balkans, on Russia, on the European Security and Defense Policy."

The US official in Brussels said the summit would provide Barshefsky and EU counterpart Pascal Lamy time to take stock of numerous outstanding trade issues involving foreign service corporations (FSCs), banana quotas, hormones and the World Trade Organization (WTO).

It was Lamy who successfully negotiated the deal earlier this month eliminating a major hurdle for China's entry into the WTO.

"Obviously China's accession to the WTO and the possibility of launching a new round" of WTO negotiations will come up, said the official.

"On the diplomatic and security front," he said, "we will note the strong cooperation between the EU and the US in addressing developments in southeast Europe, Russia and Ukraine."

"We strongly support the concept of European defense and of Europe taking more of a share of the burden," said the official.

"There need to be strong cooperative links between the EU and NATO," he added.

The EU-US summit will be preceded, on Monday, by an EU-Russia summit in Moscow, and followed by Clinton visits to Germany, Russia and Ukraine.

The EU-Russia summit on Monday promised to be a bit meatier then the Portugal meet, with the thorny issue of Chechnya and the prospect of EU enlargement to include the former Soviet Baltic states set to top the agenda there.

Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet with Guterres, Prodi and Solana, who said in an article published in the Russian newspaper Izvestia on Friday that there were "some disagreements between the EU and Russia, most of all where Chechnya is concerned.

"This question will definitely be discussed at the summit," said Solana. "The European Union feels that its moral duty is to protest against innocent people suffering from the military operation there."

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