EUROPEAN UNION DEPLOYS FIRST BORDER MONITORING MISSION By Vladimir Socor
The European Union's High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy, Javier Solana, and EU External Affairs Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner joined the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine and Moldova, Borys Tarasyuk and Andrei Stratan, to inaugurate the EU's Border Assistance Mission (BAM) for the Ukraine-Moldova border. The ceremony took place in Odessa, en route to the EU-Ukraine summit, which the European leaders attended in Kyiv. The BAM is deployed to the field as of December 1. The mission, the first of its kind for the EU, stems from its concept of a common foreign and security policy and European neighborhood policy, as well as from a June 2005 joint request by Presidents Vladimir Voronin of Moldova and Viktor Yushchenko of Ukraine to the EU to deploy such a mission. The EU responded unusually fast, and a tripartite agreement to organize the BAM was signed by Ferrero-Waldner with Tarasyuk and Stratan on October 7 at the Palanca crossing point on that border. The three parties' respective priorities overlap but do not fully coincide. Moldova's primary goal is to curb Transnistria's unlawful, massive transit and export trade that sustains the secessionist leaders and enriches their accomplices in Ukraine as well. Cutting down decisively on Tiraspol's income should soften up its defiant position in the deadlocked negotiations toward a political settlement. Kyiv's primary goal is to substantiate its aspirations to the EU by demonstrating a commitment to European border- and customs- management standards and suppressing organized crime at the border and in Ukraine itself. The EU's primary goal is to validate its common policy and demonstrate its capacity for external border management, which forms an instrument of the EU's neighborhood policy. Suppressing the traffic in arms, drugs, and human beings is also an official rationale for the mission
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