Briefing from the Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman on: Gibraltar, Asylum and Immigration, Racism, Afghanistan/Brigadier Lane, Northern Ireland and Golden Jubilee Weekend.
Gibraltar
Asked where we were on Gibraltar in light of the Prime Minister’s meeting with Prime Minister Aznar of Spain today, the Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman (PMOS) said that today’s meeting was, in a sense, fortuitous inasmuch as Prime Minister Aznar was visiting the country to make a speech in Oxford this afternoon. He would be meeting the Prime Minister again on 18 June for his regular pre-Seville Summit bilateral. Where we were on Gibraltar was where we had always said we would be at this stage.
As we had signalled, we envisaged negotiations continuing until early summer. In reaching the stage we had reached, it was clear - and inevitable - that we were getting down to the more difficult issues. Negotiations went up and went down. The important point, however, was that they were continuing. Today was part of that process.
Asked whether the key point was the red line on the military base on the Rock, the PMOS said that everyone was aware that there were two difficult issues - the military base and the status of the final settlement. Given where we were in the process, however, it would not be helpful to pre-empt the discussions that were taking place.
Asked to clarify the Government’s ‘bottom line’ on the military base, the PMOS said we believed that the military establishment should remain under British control and that any settlement should be a final settlement. Put to him that the Spanish were ‘blowing’ the process ‘out of the water’ by saying that they did not envisage giving up their claim to sovereignty or sharing the military base, the PMOS said it was not his job to speak on behalf of the Spanish Government.
Nor was he going to get involved in ‘megaphone diplomacy’. Negotiations came and went. The important thing was to give the process the time and space to develop. As we had indicated, we would give it until early summer to see how far we had progressed.
Asked to explain the point of today’s meeting, the PMOS said that the two Prime Ministers were taking advantage of an opportunity that had presented itself. Prime Minister Aznar was visiting Britain anyway. The Prime Minister wanted to use the occasion to meet up and talk to him about Gibraltar, as well as the lead-up to the Seville Summit, in which we wanted to see real progress made on European Council reform and get the last lap of the enlargement process under way. They would also want to discuss other important issues.
The Prime Minister had written to the Spanish Prime Minister last week in his capacity as EU President expressing his concern that the asylum action plan agreed by EU leaders at Tampere in Finland in October 1999 was in danger of falling behind. He believed that Seville was an opportunity to renew momentum on this matter by focussing in particular on three issues.
First, we wanted to toughen up EU borders by drawing up initiatives similar to the UK-Italian initiative in the Balkans which had put experts into regional areas to achieve real results. Secondly, we wanted to benchmark the performance of third countries in terms of taking returnees, and if necessary use EU levers - economic or financial - to encourage them to do so. Thirdly, we wanted to help those EU countries on the ‘frontline&