Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-10-25-Speech-3-239"
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"en.20001025.10.3-239"2
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". – I am sure that the honourable Member was right to say that we must show some patience about developments in Belgrade, in Yugoslavia, over the coming weeks as democracy is consolidated. It does not mean that we abandon or surrender our principles or our values. We cannot do that. But we need to ensure that Mr Kostunica has time to develop and strengthen the democratic base of his government. Everyone wants to see him succeed in the formidable task he has taken on, and so far it has to be said that everything he has done and everything he has said has pointed in the same democratic direction. He has set up an amnesty commission to deal with the issue of prisoners, though some have already been released, one or two of whose cases have been brought to all our attention here, but as I said to the Patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Vienna a week ago, the issue of the Albanian prisoners is going to be one which he will have to look at as a matter of some urgency.
On Kosovo, as two honourable Members have mentioned, my position begins and ends with Security Council Resolution 1244. I note the imaginative leaps of others. I am not sure they are always very judicious or wise, but as far as I am concerned Resolution 1244 is where the policy rests.
The EUR 200 million emergency package will partly be in structural assistance but I set out in my remarks the sort of direction in which we would be seeking to spend it and given that the bulk of it comes from the "Emergencies in third countries" line in the overall budget, we are not having to take money from other countries in the region, or from other regions, in order to provide this assistance.
The honourable lady who knows so much about south-east Europe and who has been pressing for more sensible and effective policies in south-east Europe for months, and indeed for years, referred to the importance of us ensuring that we can deliver relief quickly and realistically. I am quite struck by some of the rather unrealistic promises that people make in Serbia. I would love to be able to clear the Danube in a couple of weeks time but it is not possible. One or two people have suggested that perhaps things could be done a little more quickly and perhaps we should take that as encouragement to speed up and deliver as rapidly as possible.
I should like to make one very important substantive point. We are talking about emergency assistance and while that emergency assistance is being delivered we will, with the World Bank, be conducting an assessment mission of longer term needs. While that is going on we will be, I hope, assisting Yugoslavia in dealing with the problems about its membership of the UN, its membership of the World Bank and its problems with the IFIs to which it owes considerable arrears. I hope we will be able to deal with those problems and have completed the needs assessment by the middle of next year.
It would be absolutely crazy to have a donors' pledging conference before we have those things in place. There is no point in having a donors' pledging conference before we can get a lot of money pledged. To get into a situation where we were not able to call on loan capital but were depending entirely on grants, for example, would means that any donors' pledging conference would go off at half cock. So I hope that we can keep that sensible speed of progress in mind.
As for what the relief will go for, I dare say some reconstruction will be necessary after the Nato air strikes. But as people said at the time, we see in Belgrade that however tragic the loss of life, these were very surgically carried out on the whole. But the main repair work that has to be done is the repair work that is necessary because of years of communism and because of years of xenophobic nationalism. That is where most of the reconstruction is required: to bring the economy into the 21st century and to make it competitive in a Europe of open borders and open markets. That is going to be a considerable task but since there are so many capable and able Serbs helping in the economies of Australia, Canada, Germany and other places around the world, all of us can look forward to the day when Serbs are able to do a great deal more to make their own economy in Serbia prosperous and successful. We want to help them with that.
On sanctions, we have lifted – as the House will know – the sanctions on oil and air flights. We are discussing with Yugoslav officials exactly what to do about the financial sanctions. Speaking for myself, although it will be a decision that the General Affairs Council will have to make very speedily, I am always reluctant to be more catholic than the Pope or – to use a more appropriate expression – more orthodox than the Patriarch: if we are told by the authorities in Belgrade that they want to get rid of the financial sanctions it would be slightly surprising if we were to say "steady on, we think we can design some smart sanctions which will meet needs which you say you are quite content for us to forget about". I will be reporting in that sense, in due course, to the General Affairs Council."@en1
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