Meeting
of the Council of the Socialist International
Santo Domingo, 26-27 November 2001
Following the Dominican Revolutionary Party’s (PRD) request to host this
Council’s meeting, the Socialist
International (SI) Council conducted its meeting in 26 and 27 of
November in the city of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.
The main topics of the meeting that were discussed under the theme of
‘Working for a more secure and fairer world’ were: 1- Responding to
terror, 2- Resolving conflicts, 3- Relieving poverty.
While focusing on the issues above, the meeting in its first day was
primarily devoted to presentations and speeches, where number of delegates
took the floor to express their opinions on the topics.
They were as follow: H. E. Hipolito Mejia, President of the Dominican
Republic, Hatuey De Camps, President of the Dominican Revolutionary Party,
Antonio Guterres, General Secretary of the Socialist Party of Purtugal,
President of the SI and the Prime Minister of Portugal, Sobatru from the
Socialist Party of Spain, Pier Masimo from the Democratic Left Party of
Italy, Rolandu Araya the future President of Cost Rica, Pasaryo the French
Socialist Party’s international relations representative, and Joe Friedman
representing trade Union from the United States Social Democrats.
All the delegates, along with condemning terrorism as an inhumane
action, insisted upon the eradication of such phenomenon in all its forms,
including fighting the funding of it. In
regards to resolving conflicts world wide, they all agreed that dialogue is
the sole solution, and SI based on its fundamental principles and values is
against any forms of force and extremism for solving conflicts and disputes. It is necessary that despite obstacles ahead, the SI should
not only distance itself from any kind of attempts to resolve conflicts, but
it must also seek to find those avenues and solutions that prevent utilizing
force and aggression. Antonio
Guterres, the President of this international organization, repeated in his
speech that SI considers it as its duty that as much as it devotes its
efforts and energy to eradicate terrorism, and its funding, it must equally
fight to relieve poverty, injustice, human rights violations, and unjust
international relations. The
last words of the report
of the Secretary-general summarized it all; ‘the international will
continue to promote peace where it does not exist, respect for human rights
wherever they are denied, democracy wherever it is missing, and social
justice every where, all for a more secure and fairer world.’
In other parts of the meeting, the financial reports were discussed,
and necessary measures were made for next year’s budget.
At the end of the meeting, delegates and representatives detailed
their conclusion in two declarations: ‘Working
for a more secure and fairer world’ carrying the same name as the
meeting, and ‘Declaration
on world poverty’. Reflecting
the discussion, a resolution on ‘fighting
the funding of terrorism’ was adopted unanimously.
On behalf of PDKI that is a member SI, a two-person delegation
consisting of comrade Dr. Khosrow Abdullahi, our Party’s representative
abroad, and Sharif Behruz, a member of our Canadian Committee participated
in the meeting. Our delegation
in the midst of the meeting was able to meet number of delegates and
representatives of the attending parties in the meeting.
In this meeting, our comrades, along with exchanging opinions in
regards to various issues, spelled out our Party positions on terrorism
particularly the event of September 11th.
Our comrades also provided their counterparts with Party documents on
the event of September 11th, the recent resignation of the
representatives from the Kurdistan province and also our Party’s peaceful
diplomatic endeavours to resolve the Kurdish issues in Iran.
