The Assembly,

(i) Welcoming the fact that the WEU satellite centre has achieved its logistical targets;

(ii) Congratulating the Spanish authorities responsible for building the centre for having provided it with the means of operating effectively;

(iii) Recalling that this centre is unique as a result of international co-operation and has been designed to contribute to peace-keeping and international security;

(iv) Congratulating the Director and the staff of the centre on the very substantial sterling work they have done there;

(v) Judging very favourably the number and nature of the treaty verification and crisis-monitoring tasks assigned to the centre;

(vi) Regretting, however, that environmental monitoring tasks assigned to the centre are few and far between;

(vii) Noting that so far certain member states have not tasked the centre at all and wondering about the reasons for their not doing so;

(viii) Believing that the period for assessing the work of the centre is not long enough for the assessment to be entirely fair and valid;

(xi) Considering that there is a risk of the satellite centre's present temporary status being prolonged and that it might not therefore be able to carry out its work in the optimum conditions for achieving its aims;

(x) Considering moreover that the Centre, although in its infancy, is an important example of measures to be taken for the progressive creation of a European defence identity;

(xi) Taking account moreover of the fact that the centre will be able to have the benefit of Helios satellite images only after summer 1995 at best;

(xii) Reaffirming that the Torrejon Satellite Centre must be the cornerstone of a complete European space-based system covering intelligence, early warning and defence;

(xiii) Believing in any event that the future of the centre should not be indissolubly linked to that of a European space-based observation system;

(xiv) Insisting on the urgent need for the centre to be as widely supported as possible by public opinion if it wishes to attain its goals of providing Europe with a useful security instrument in the widest possible meaning of the term,

RECOMMENDS THAT THE COUNCIL

Take a decision as soon as possible that will guarantee the continuity of the satellite centre by making it permanent, so as to avoid a temporary situation being maintained to the detriment of its work;

Establish a method for continuously assessing the work done by the centre so as to optimise its capabilities at all times;

Keep the Assembly informed of the practical details for implementing the memorandum of understanding on the Helios satellite signed by WEU and the governments of France, Italy and Spain;

Encourage the member states to avail themselves of the services of the centre, especially those which have not yet done so;

Urge member countries to make use of the services of the centre more regularly, in particular by giving it environmental monitoring tasks (disaster relief, control of water supplies, population movement, hazardous activities, control of nature of terrain, control of illicit movements);

Establish relations with the European Space Agency in order to determine possibilities for co-operation between the two organisations in space-based observation;

Study the possibilities of technical and commercial space co- operation with the CIS countries in order to allow the technical and human resources of those countries to be used for preventive and peaceful purposes;

Inform public opinion in Europe of the tasks and work undertaken by the Torrejon Satellite Centre in order to promote a better understanding of such tasks among the citizens of the European countries and to obtain their support for the aims of the centre.