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GCC official calls for strengthening political, security cooperation with EU

Conference on EU-GCC trade and  economic relations in the EP
Conference on EU-GCC trade and economic relations in the EP
BRUSSELS, Oct 19 (KUNA) -- The Assistant Secretary-General of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Abdel Aziz Aluwaisheg has underlined the importance of boosting cooperation between the GCC and the EU in many fields including security and political issues.
"The EU is still the number one trading partner for the GCC, still the source of technical support that we get and we have been cooperating more and more on political and security issues," he told the European Parliament's committee on international trade Wednesday evening.
He addressed a conference on "trade and economic relations between the EU and the GCC countries" held in the European Parliament in Brussels.
"Today we can work on many issues together. We can try to unlock the deadlock on the FTA (Free Trade Agreement) but we can also try other things that we think can yield immediate results. One is to strengthen the EU-GCC political and security dialogue, which includes fighting terrorism, fighting human trafficking and illegal migration. These are goals that we both share," said the top GCC official.
Aluwaisheg noted that the EU-GCC cooperation agreement of 1988 established a framework for cooperation and 15 working groups were formed to boost bilateral relations.
"One of the instruments that we used was the FTA negotiations. We put all our eggs in that basket for a while. We forgot about other things. That led to a stagnation in developing the tools that we need," he said.
FTA negotiations between the 6-member GCC and the 28-member EU has been on hold for a number of years.
"We believe that the FTA is an excellent work. We have agreement on nearly every issue. We also agreed on the political points," he said.
The GCC official noted that there was one point of dispute, which was the export duties. "Have we been able to solve it, we would have signed the agreement long time ago. How did we allow a theoretical issue like export duties to affect the progress. We think we can overcome that difficulty," he said.
The GCC official called for more and more trade and investment dialogue, wider partnership between business communities and to work harder on energy cooperation between the two sides.
On her part, Tokia Saifi vice chair of the committee, stressed on the importance of EU-GCC trade and economic partnership and lamented that the FTA negotiations have not been completed until now.
Business professionals and experts discussed two topics during the conference. One on legal and regulatory framework for business and investment in GCC countries and secondly on industrial development in the GCC countries. The GCC includes Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and UAE. (end) nk.gta