Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-11-14-Speech-3-184"
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"en.20011114.8.3-184"2
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"Madam President, the war in Afghanistan is clearly now producing military dividends, as has been seen in the past 48 hours in the extraordinary scale and speed of the collapse of the Taliban, although they still remain potentially very powerful in large parts of the country and the terrorists they have been succouring remain hidden from view.
However there are aspects of the war and not just the terrorist aspect which have been kept hidden and one group I should like to mention – to which, Madam President, you paid tribute on Monday – is the journalists who paid the ultimate price to tell us the story. We know so little about modern war and we are so excluded by the powers-that-be that without the commitment and professionalism of journalists we would know nothing. We need to reiterate that debt of gratitude.
What we know from the comparative success in Mazar-i-Sharif and now in Kabul, and even reports of the front line extending to Kandahar, is that new challenges are presenting themselves. The international coalition – particularly the United States and not least its President – has assumed that the Northern Alliance is in some ways biddable, that it will do certain things and not others. So we were told with some certainty that it would not take Kabul. But it is there. It seems to me that it is not quite so biddable as many in the coalition suggested or hoped. It makes all the more urgent the diplomatic initiative to generate respect for the rule of law and a stable governmental process, even if not yet a stable government. It becomes more urgent because new freedoms are emerging even as I speak, as we can see in the television pictures from Kabul. But we also hear of new fears, because Afghanistan has a brutal history and the brutality was not just the work of the Taliban. So there is a great need for urgency.
The second challenge is the humanitarian one, which preceded the war but has been compounded by it. Now that there is a larger swathe of territory not subject to Taliban control, we must
and urgently assess what needs to be done and be present on the ground. Our support for the humanitarian effort needs to be translated into practical action. The Commissioner spoke of extraordinary amounts of money, which I think he said were largely unrecognised. Unfortunately Europe's contribution is often unremarked in these situations, and we have to have a visible presence on the ground and show our solidarity, not just in the military campaign but also in the humanitarian effort.
I have two final comments. One concerns the Middle East. I salute the quiet but effective diplomacy of Mr Solana and his colleagues, the Belgian Presidency, the Commission and others, because, while America has been looking in another direction, we have managed to de-escalate the worst of the tensions, a necessary prelude to the Mitchell process which is the path to a viable peace.
Colleagues have referred to the European security and defence policy. My group is strongly in favour of it and welcomed the moves in that direction. We thought that was what ESDP was, until we discovered recently at Downing Street that it is European security and dining policy.
Madam President, I should like to hear your comments on the European security and dining policy, which runs counter to the concept of a European security and defence policy that is for all and not just for some."@en1
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