Second EU-Pakistan Summit — Joint Statement

The EU expressed appre­ci­a­tion and sup­port for Pakistan’s deter­mi­na­tion to com­bat ter­ror­ism and extrem­ism and acknowl­edged the great sac­ri­fices being made by the peo­ple and secu­ri­ty forces of Pak­istan towards peace and sta­bil­i­ty in the region. The EU and Pak­istan agreed last year that ter­ror­ism, vio­lent extrem­ism and mil­i­tan­cy rep­re­sent seri­ous threats to inter­na­tion­al peace and secu­ri­ty, as well as to the inter­nal sta­bil­i­ty of indi­vid­ual coun­tries. All states must ensure that these threats should be eliminated.

The lead­ers acknowl­edged that the threat of ter­ror­ism was glob­al, region­al and local which goes beyond bound­aries. They stressed the imper­a­tive of clos­er coop­er­a­tion by all coun­tries to elim­i­nate ter­ror­ism and to dis­man­tle ter­ror­ist net­works and pre­vent them from recruit­ing, fund­ing ter­ror­ist organ­i­sa­tions and spon­sor­ing of ter­ror­ist acts. 

The lead­ers recalled their com­mit­ment to fur­ther strength­en coop­er­a­tion in the fight against ter­ror­ism, with­in the frame­work of the Unit­ed Nations as well as in oth­er rel­e­vant forums. In this con­text, they reaf­firmed that counter-ter­ror­ism mea­sures and the pro­tec­tion of human rights are com­ple­men­tary and mutu­al­ly rein­forc­ing, and should be imple­ment­ed in full respect of inter­na­tion­al law. They decid­ed to strength­en prac­ti­cal arrange­ments for a more reg­u­lar counter-ter­ror­ism dialogue.

Pak­istan wel­comed the launch of an EU “Civil­ian Capac­i­ty Build­ing for Law Enforce­ment” pro­gramme in March 2010 to sup­port the government’s counter-ter­ror­ism efforts. This pro­gramme aims at capac­i­ty build­ing in the field of civ­il law enforce­ment by sup­port­ing the Nation­al Counter-Ter­ror­ism Author­i­ty (NACTA) in becom­ing a ful­ly oper­a­tional and effec­tive agency. It fur­ther sup­ports the Pak­istani author­i­ties in the devel­op­ment of provin­cial capa­bil­i­ties, by work­ing on law enforce­ment and crim­i­nal justice.

The EU wel­comed the Gov­ern­ment of Pakistan’s renewed efforts to work with the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty with a view to elim­i­nat­ing the men­ace of illic­it drugs. The EU sup­port­ed the new Counter-Nar­cotics Pol­i­cy and the five-year mas­ter plan. Both sides will joint­ly explore how best to address the links between extrem­ist and ter­ror­ist organ­i­sa­tions and the inter­na­tion­al drug trade, includ­ing coop­er­a­tion to build Pakistan’s capac­i­ty in terms of train­ing, equip­ment and forensics.

In the light of the recent Nuclear Secu­ri­ty Sum­mit in Wash­ing­ton, the EU and Pak­istan stressed the impor­tance of efforts aimed at strength­en­ing nuclear secu­ri­ty, under­tak­en nation­al­ly or through mutu­al­ly agreed coop­er­a­tion activ­i­ties. In addi­tion, the EU and Pak­istan will devel­op their coop­er­a­tion in the area of export con­trols. More gen­er­al­ly, the EU and Pak­istan will step up dia­logue in the field of dis­ar­ma­ment and non-pro­lif­er­a­tion in order to address all rel­e­vant issues.