Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-03-15-Speech-4-183"
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"en.20010315.10.4-183"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, throughout almost 6 000 years of human history and 10 000 wars, we have always encouraged the production of weapons.
A certain degree of conscience, however, now seems to be dawning upon us. In 1972, we banned biological weapons. In 1993, we banned chemical weapons, and in 1997, we banned land mines. Nuclear proliferation is more or less under control, although we have been going through a very difficult phase since the signing of the Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1968, which then came into force in 1970. Nowadays, however, the weapons that take most lives are light weapons. There are estimated to be five hundred thousand million light weapons on this planet. They kill 200 000 people a year, which is twenty times more than land mines. More than half of victims are in Africa.
So it comes as no surprise that the Secretary General of the United Nations, who is himself a great African, has put on the agenda of the UN General Assembly, which is due to meet next July in New York, the debate on a convention to try to limit this dangerous and terrible proliferation. The idea is to identify weapons so that they can be monitored, to keep a register of weapons, to encourage all States to strengthen their controls and their domestic legislation on exporting and re-exporting weapons, to organise the prosecution and punishment of traffickers and, finally, to finance and push forward national weapons’ collection and destruction programmes.
Against such a backdrop, the European Union, which adopted a moratorium on the sale of weapons three years ago at the behest of Great Britain, would do itself credit by having an effective common policy and playing its full part. I welcome the fact that six political groups were able to table a motion for a resolution which is an excellent and timely compromise.
I will not say any more. We must support it. It is totally in keeping with our code of conduct and with what has already been decided by the OSCE, and falls fairly and squarely within the scope of the next UN Convention.
During voting time, Mr President, I will ask to table two oral amendments, which I know have already received general approval. The first is in the recitals. When the time comes, I will say where to add a citation to the Bamako Declaration of last month – a great historical first – in which 52 African nations took up a single position which was in perfect harmony with our code of conduct. The second addition would simply be a reference to the marking of weapons in the proposals of our compromise resolution. I know they have your backing and I will support them at the appropriate time."@en1
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