GENEVA, March 10 (Reuter) - European Commissioner Emma Bonino said on Monday it was essential for the European Union to have a common foreign policy decided by majority vote to be able to deal properly with international crises. Bonino, who is in charge of the EU's humanitarian office as well as holding responsability in Brussels for fisheries and consumer affairs, was speaking at a news conference during a day-long visit to Geneva. "It is a decision to be taken, but I myself hope that six years of experience have finally made people understand that the European Union must have a common foreign policy," she said. This, she added, should be decided by majority vote in the EU Council of Ministers like agricultural and fisheries policies. The current procedure requires unanimous decisions on foreign policy issues in the Council, "and a a result there is never unainimity," Bonino, an Italian, said. She was replying to a question on how the EU could more effectively respond to humanitarian crises such as the civi

l war in Bosnia, which ended in late 1995 after almost four years, and the present tension in the Great Lakes region of central Africa. Bonino said that, in the current Inter-Governmental Conference on revising the 1992 Treaty Of Maastricht which established current policy-making procedures, the EU had "an extraordinary opportunity" to make key changes. "Because we do not have a common foreign policy, we have 15 national foreign policies, and for this reason very often cacophony is assured, and inefficacy even more so," she said. Asked if she also favoured a common defence policy, she replied: "For me, yes.... "The question is whether the European Union wants to become a policial union or whether it wants to remain a big free-trade area, full stop. That is what the current treatydiscussions are all about," Bonino said.