Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/1999-11-17-Speech-3-136"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.19991117.5.3-136"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:translated text |
"Mr President, discussing Chechnya today reminds us of Kosovo and makes us wonder about that famous duty to interfere on humanitarian grounds, that principle which is, unfortunately, as vague as it is noble. Indeed, it is used with excessive discretionary power, often owing to specific political or economic interests. The principle of humanitarian intervention has, until now, failed miserably because Milosevic’s regime is still firmly in power in a country that has gone backwards in time and economics by at least thirty years, while the majority of the Albanian people have returned to their land and 10% of Kosovar Serbs and all the gypsy peoples have been forced into exile. In Chechnya, the situation is even worse. Two months ago, the Russian army entered Chechnya, a land which had already been destroyed in human and economic terms and drained three years ago with more than 100,000 dead. Today, we hear of the civilian population being shelled, which has caused over 3,000 deaths and turned 200,000 people into refugees. And all of this while the so-called “virtuous” international community justifies the Russian intervention on the pretext of fighting terrorism, and the International Monetary Fund bankrolls unsecured funds to Yeltsin, despite the billions of dollars misappropriated by the Russian authorities.
It is true that Chechnya is a part of the Russian Federation, but the Russian troops do not have the authority to legally massacre men, women and children. The international community, our Union, is duty-bound, if it is truly committed to safeguarding human rights, not to remain passive. The region has been ravaged by war and, in the meantime, the European Union is increasing its commitment to humanitarian aid and funding for the TRASECA project to link the Black Sea and Central Asia. And the fuel factor – gas and oil – has played an important part in the Chechen crisis. American companies are interested in Caspian Sea oil as an alternative to Persian Gulf oil. They asked the Department of State to draw up a strategic map of possible routes: the most important would be the section between the Caspian Sea and the Turkish port of Ceyhan, which affects the route between Baku and the Russian port of Novorossisk. Thus, in 1994, the Russian army intervened to show that Russia controlled the operational oil pipelines allowing the Caspian Sea production to be exported so it would not risk being excluded from the power play dominated by America.
The Union must have one single objective: to contribute to re-establishing peace, to find a new status for Chechnya, as laid down in the agreement signed between Russia and Chechnya on 31 August 1996, and it must also remember that if Europe wants to defend human rights, it cannot continue to endorse the fact that Russia believes force and the army to be the only political tools."@en1
|
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples