Paris, 23 February 2001.- Visiting Vienna this week at the invitation of the President of the Austrian Nationalrat - Dr. Heinz FISCHER, the President of the Assembly of WEU – the interim European Security and Defence Assembly – Mr Klaus BÜHLER, MdB, held extensive talks with leading parliamentarians (President FISCHER, Dr Peter KOSTELKA - Head of the Austrian delegation , Mr Peter SCHIEDER- Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Mr Wolfgang JUNG - Chairman of the Defence Committee and Dr Ferdinand MAIER - Vice-President of the Nationalrat and Chairman of the Sub-Committee on European affairs)
 
The discussions focused principally on the urgent requirement for a proper parliamentary dimension to be established, ideally at « 15 + 15 » , to support the European security and defence policy. 
 
Both the Austrian Ministers for Foreign Affairs Dr Benita FERRERO-WALDNER and the Minister for National Defence Mr Herbert SCHEIBNER gave their support to the idea of using the inclusive nature of the WEU Assembly – the iESDA – as a way of continuing to bring together the national parliamentarians from the 15 EU nations and their colleagues from the candidate countries for EU/NATO accession and the non-EU European allies. 
 
President BÜHLER, welcoming Austrian encouragement for the work of the Assembly , thanked the ministers in particular for their clear message and asked them to promote such ideas in all relevant inter-governmental fora .