APPENDIX 4
Letter from the Minister of State, Foreign
and Commonwealth Office, to the Chairman—clarification of
oral evidence
You and the Committees might welcome further
clarification of the comments I made during my evidence on 4 May
about Zimbabwe and the EU Code of Conduct on Arms Exports.
I can confirm that the Government is encouraging
our EU partners to follow our policy of refusing all licence applications
for exports of arms and military equipment to Zimbabwe. We have
informed partners in writing of our new policy and asked them
to consider adopting similarly robust policies themselves. We
will follow the issue up in the framework of the CFSP, as well
as at more senior level as appropriate. We will also make clear
our hope that any Member State contemplating any exports of arms
or military equipment to Zimbabwe would seek our views first,
although as the Secretary of State told the House on 3 May we
are not aware of any partners planning such exports. This approach
is in line with operative paragraph 7 of the Code of Conduct,
which states that "in order to maximise the efficiency of
this Code, EU Member States will work within the framework of
CFSP to reinforce their co-operation and to promote their convergence
in the field of conventional arms exports".
We do not intend, however, to circulate denial
notifications under the Code of Conduct as a matter of course
for exports which we have refused as a result of our national
embargo on Zimbabwe. This is because the embargo amounts to a
blanket restriction, over and above the criteria in the Code.
Under operative paragraph 3 of the Code, Member States are to
circulate "details of licences refused in accordance with
the Code", that is, after case-by-case assessment against
the criteria in the Code.
The licences refused or revoked to date on the
basis of our national embargo clearly do not fall into this category,
and circulating denial notifications for them would be inconsistent
with both the letter and the spirit of the Code. We would however
circulate details of any further refusals which could be justified
by reference to the Code criteria alone, irrespective of our national
embargo.
We believe that this approach is the most effective
available to us in terms of encouraging EU partners to follow
our lead on Zimbabwe while protecting the integrity of the Code
of Conduct, in which the UK naturally has a particular interest.
17 May 2000
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