On November 21st, the Minister of the Environment announced the withdrawal of millions of acres around the East Arm of Great Slave Lake and the Ramparts River Wetlands, one example of our government's commitment to protecting Canada's north.

It marks a major step in the process of creating a national park in the east arm of Great Slave Lake and a national wildlife area for the Ramparts River and the wetlands.

23. Attaches, however, the utmost importance, first of all, to the successive enlargements of the Union as decided by the European Council on 16-17 December 2004, and second, to the development of the European Neighbourhood Policy, as the Union's highest priorities in the political agenda for 2005, including a European Economic Area for European countries; insists on the crucial importance of making every effort to achieve a solution through peace and dignity to the Middle East conflict on the basis of the Quartet Road Map and the implementation of the Strategic Partnership with the Mediterranean and the Middle East decided by the European Council in June 2004; welcomes, to that end, the recent summit at Sharm el-Sheik between ...[+++]Ariel Sharon and Abu Mazen; insists equally on the utmost effort being made to contribute to the resolution of other existing or foreseeable conflicts and crises, such as those in Kosovo, Chechnya, Darfur, Somalia, the Great Lakes region, Iran and North Korea (DPRK), and to the pursuit of social progress in the world in line with the UN Millennium Development Goals;

8. Calls on the EU Presidency to sponsor or co-sponsor resolutions on the Middle East, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Zimbabwe, the Great Lakes region (including Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo) and Indonesia, as well as on Colombia, Burma and North Korea;

7. Calls on the EU Presidency to sponsor or co-sponsor resolutions on Chechnya, the Middle East, Saudi Arabia, Zimbabwe, the Great Lakes region, Tunisia and Indonesia/East Timor;

J. acknowledging that the debate’s concentration on the Middle East and the slave trade is evidence of the great importance attached to these two subjects by many of the delegations meeting in Durban, but regretting that as a result other important questions such as the situation of refugees, asylum seekers, migrant workers, women and lower castes, which are part of racial discrimination, xenophobia and ethnic intolerance in the world, did not receive the attention they deserve,