E-057/00
March 20, 2000MEETING REVIEWS SECURITY IN THE AMERICAS
Problems and risks to peace and security in the Western Hemisphere are the focus of a special meeting that opened at the Organization of American States (OAS) on Monday, part of ongoing initiatives to devise workable common strategies to manage hemispheric security issues.
The special meeting of the Organization's Committee on Hemispheric Security stems from mandates for the OAS to review approaches to hemispheric security, in light of new realities unfolding since the end of the Cold War. Convened under a 1999 OAS General Assembly mandate, the meeting seeks as well to advance preparations for a Special Conference on Security proposed in the Plan of Action issued at the 1998 Second Summit of the Americas.
In his opening remarks, Committee Chairman Ambassador Flavio Darío Espinal of the Dominican Republic cited two conventions as internationally-recognized success stories of OAS action on security matters. The Inter-American Convention against the Illicit Manufacturing of and Trafficking in Firearms, Ammunition, Explosives and Other Related Material and the Inter-American Convention on Transparency in Conventional Arms Acquisitions were negotiated and approved in just over two years, he noted.
Also up for analysis are such other topics as conflict prevention and resolution. The delegations are also to identify ways to revitalize and bolster the hemispheric security system, involving a review of the instruments and institutions upon which the system is based.
Delegates to the two-day meeting are also looking at subregional security treaties and arrangements, including the (Caribbean) Regional Security System, the Framework Treaty on Democratic Security in Central America, and the Political Declaration of Mercosur, Bolivia and Chile as a Zone of Peace.
Addressing the first working session, several delegations stressed the implications of volatile financial flows, unstable international prices for oil and other crucial raw materials and environmental destruction among a host of factors they identified as posing serious threats to the hemisphere's security.
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