Western countries 'must support reforms in eastern Europe'

Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski said today that Western European governments have a duty to support democratic reforms in countries on Europe’s eastern fringe.

“We must lend our support to all of those who want to live in accordance with European standards and democratic values in whatever region of our continent,” Kwasniewski said at the opening of a two-day summit of the Council of Europe, Europe’s top human rights watchdog.

“We would like to see borders linking rather than dividing … no one should be belittled, abandoned or forgotten.”

Kwasniewski has pushed European leaders to hold open the prospect of EU membership for Poland’s neighbour Ukraine, whose democratically elected President Viktor Yushchenko has declared membership a strategic goal, and to keep engaging other countries to the East, such as authoritarian Belarus.

Yuschenko, noting that his country dropped visa requirements for EU citizens earlier this month, called on the EU to reciprocate by simplifying visa rules for Ukrainian students, teachers and businesspeople.

“I am sure that we will be able to avoid the creation of two Europes,” he said.

The Council of Europe summit aims to redefine the organisation’s role in the face of ever-widening EU enlargement. Now that the EU is planning to establish its own human rights agency, officials at the Strasbourg, France-based council are calling for their mandate to be clarified.

“The challenge facing this summit … is to answer the question – what is the purpose of the Council of Europe,” said the organisation’s Secretary General Terry Davis. “We cannot find the answer in the past – instead we must focus on the future,” he said, arguing that Europeans want more attention paid to democracy and human rights.

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, Ukrainian President Yushchenko and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan are among the 46 leaders – each representing a Council of Europe member state – expected to take part in the summit at Warsaw’s Royal Castle.

The Council of Europe was created in 1949 to oversee the democratisation of western Europe after the end of World War II and to standardise member states’ social and legal practices.

It is still the only exclusively European body where such former Soviet republics as Moldova or Azerbaijan are represented, and is best known for working to expose breaches of civil liberties and ensuring that international human rights treaties are being adhered to across the continent.