Spanish Campaign Update
Dear Friends of the ICBL,
AS you may know, Spanish government stopped the Ratification precessus of the Ottawa's Treaty (planned for last 17th September) because they wanted to add a kind of Statement of Understanding. Having known this, the NGOs of the Spanish Campaign started a tough job of contacting the oposition parties in order to try to force the governement to withdraw the Statement of Understanding and to Ratify the Treaty as soon as possible (our first intention was to be on the first 40 club, but with this action of the government, we stayed out).
The difference between the Statement suggested by the government and the ones approved by the Canadians and the UK remains basicly in the fact that the Spanish said: "It is the undrestanding of Canada that in the context of operations, exercices or other military activity sanctioned by the UN or otherwise conducted in accordance with international law, the mere participation by the Spanish forces, or individual spanish, in operations, exercises or other military activity conducted in combination with the armed forces of States not party of the Convention will not, by itself be considered to be assistance, encouragment or inducement in accordance with the meaning of those terms in Arcticle 1(c)".
In that sense our objections were: First, this is in fact an amandement, which is not allow by the Convention itself; Second: while the Canadians or the UK specify that "this possibility of cooperation" will not be a problem ALWAYS THAT MINES ARE NOT USED
DURING THE EXERCISES, the Spanish version omited this crucial part.
Given all this, we suggested to withdraw the Statement of Understanding, or, at least, to add at the end "... always that APM ar not used on this activities". The opposition parties agreed with us and finally: THE GOVERNMENT HAS WITHDRAWED THE STATEMENT.
We wish to thank all of you who helped us on this.
Greetings from Spain,
Raul Romeva
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Raul Romeva - Coordinador campa?as desarme - Tel: 34 934820763 mailto:rromeva-at-intermon-org
INTERM?N - Miembro de Oxfam Internacional Roger de Ll?ria, 15 08010 Barcelona Tel: +34 934820700 Fax: +34 934820707
mailto:intermon+at+intermon+org
