Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/1999-11-18-Speech-4-249"
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"en.19991118.12.4-249"2
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"Mr President, Burundi, as has been stated earlier, is on the brink of another catastrophe. Rebel attacks, army cleansing, hundreds of thousands of refugees falling prey to starvation and disease and an economy which is ruined beyond repair. Some even claim that the situation is comparable to that in Rwanda just before the genocide in 1994.
Despite this, Europe is adopting a back-seat approach again. Because the Member States apparently cannot agree on how to tackle the crisis in the Great Lakes Region, we leave Burundi to African countries, some of which are involved in the crisis. We link our aid to the Arusha peace process where Tanzania acts as mediator but at the same time condone the fact that rebels carry out attacks on Burundi from the same country. We refuse to cooperate for fundamental reasons with a government that has managed nonetheless to acquire Parliament’s support.
The question is very much whether, in this way, we are not playing into the hands of the extremists, both amongst the rebels and within the army. Do we want Hutu extremist movements to seize power in Burundi and commit renewed genocide on a minority? Or are we waiting for a new coup and Tutsi extremists from the army to start renewed cleansing? If we do not want this, let us then give our full support to the peace process in Burundi. Let us bring the moderate parties round the table and isolate the extremists. Let us give unconditional aid to the population and kick-start the economy. Let us finally take Burundi’s problem seriously. In any case, we will never be able to say: we did not know."@en1
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