•
Planning for should go forward for the Center, as there
is a definite need for it.
• It is important to clarify further that the Center
does not overlap with existing, related activities
• What kind of democracy the Center should serve also
needs clarification.
• The Center should have global outreach (and perform
regional services)
• Governments must support the Center, but it should
be an independent entity, nonpartisan in nature, and reflect
the experience and skills of political parties and NGOs
in its services
• The meeting agreed that Hungarian Foreign Ministry
should commission a feasibility and implementation study,
addressing issues such as:
- How
might the Center be established?
-
What kind of services should it offer (ie: a focus on
country-based projects offering practical services, which
aggregate actual experiences with democracy on the part
of a variety of countries)?
-
What organizational basis should the Center have (while
Hungary’s offer to undertake this study was welcomed,
the consensus is that no one country should be in control).
Attending
the meeting were representatives from: Hungarian Ministry
of Foreign Affairs (five including Dep. Asst. Sec’y.);
the Embassies of Germany (Minister and Political Counselor),
U.S.A. (DCM, Political Counselor plus Nicole Bibbins Sedaca
of DOS/Global Affairs), Chile (Political Officer); Stiftungen:
Friedrich Ebert, Konrad Adenauer, Hans Zeidel and Friedrich
Naumann; EU (Political Reporter); Freedom House, UNDP (Kalman
Mizsei, Dir., Euro/CIS) and Richard C. Rowson, President
of the Council for a Community of Democracies.
•
N.B.: The meeting accepted with pleasure the offer by the
Hungarian Foreign Ministry to designate Ambassador
Istvan Gyarmati to carry forward development of the
Center, including the organization of an intergovernmental
meeting this spring in Budapest to formalize a plan for
the Center, which is to be presented at the Community of
Democracies Ministerial Conference in Santiago, this coming
May. Ambassador Gyarmati, formerly with the Foreign Ministry
(for 5 years), is active in the nongovernmental world as
Chairman of the Centre for Euro-Atlantic Integration and
Democracy, and active in other groups involved in democracy-building
worldwide.
