Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-01-29-Speech-3-012"
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". – Mr President, since at the last session of the Parliament in Strasbourg I was able to spend an hour with the Foreign Affairs Committee discussing North Korea under the benign stewardship of my honourable friend, the Member for Westphalia, and since last week we were able to spend two hours with the Committee on Foreign Affairs, Human Rights, Common Security and Defence Policy here discussing a wide range of issues, perhaps I could now concentrate on Iraq, bearing in mind the limitations imposed on the competences of the Commission.
While being clear about the limits of our role, let me however make a number of points. First, it must be plain to all that the authority of the United Nations should be a paramount consideration. The pity is that in the past we have stood by too often while the United Nations has been defied, thereby exposing ourselves to understandable charges of double standards.
Second, Saddam Hussein must work with the UN inspectors under Dr Blix to get rid of those weapons of mass destruction for which he has not yet accounted. We should not forget that the issue at the heart of this crisis is how Saddam Hussein treats the rest of the world, not how the rest of the world treats Saddam Hussein.
We should not forget the sobering comment made this week by Dr Blix. I quote: Iraq appears not to have come to a genuine acceptance, not even today, of the disarmament which was demanded of it and which it needs to carry out to win the confidence of the world and to live in peace.
Third, if inspectors can disarm Saddam Hussein, that is preferable by far to any other imaginable cause of action.
Any sensible person should want this crisis to be ended peacefully, if it is humanly possible to do so. It would be good for the United Nations if we could accomplish this task without casualty, collateral damage or the daunting consequence of military intervention. It would also be good for Iraq, for the region and, I would argue, very good for the world. But that does rather assume that Saddam Hussein will now work with the inspectors. Unfortunately, we have little evidence even now that he has yet learned that he cannot go on defying world opinion forever.
I have always believed that the terms of the UN resolution obliged us to face two realities: first, we must make a serious effort to disarm through inspection; second, if the inspectors make it clear that this is a case of mission impossible, we cannot avoid facing up to the consequences. The alternative would be the sort of humiliation that would make it more difficult to assert the authority of the United Nations in future cases.
I believe this to be an exceptionally serious debate and one which is going to have effects not just in this chamber but across Europe and the world. It is going to shape the sort of world we live in and pass on to our kids and I do not think it is going to be helped by trading rhetoric. Speaking like my youthful partner and friend, the High Representative, both of us have grown younger in these jobs. Speaking like him as a proud citizen of old Europe – a part of old Europe which once had a spot of trouble with one of our colonies on the other side of the Atlantic – I have occasionally reflected that if King George had not played his hand so badly, if he had not made such a mess of things, then instead of fetching up as the last Governor of Hong Kong I might have finished up as the Governor of Arkansas or Texas, and then who knows what might have happened!
I would like to make one remark at the outset: I think it is fair to say that, on the whole, since the Second World War, we have managed to create global institutions and international agreements which have helped make the world a much more prosperous and peaceful place. I recall that, at the time of President Clinton's second inaugural address, he was able to boast that there are today more people living under democracies than under tyrannies; we ended the last century with a world which produced as much in two or three years as we had produced in the whole of the 19th century, with incalculable consequences for the living standards of most people. This is not a bad record after a century which began so badly.
Speaking as a citizen of old Europe, I would say that we need to remember that it is often wiser to raise a quizzical eyebrow than to return an insult.
We have to recognise that if we get this wrong and handle this crisis badly, the consequences could be profoundly serious and very long-lived: on the one hand, we could fatally damage the institutions of global cooperation and governance; on the other, we could make the world a much more dangerous place. We could weaken partnerships between friends, exacerbate relations with the Islamic world and worsen the prospects for solving crises elsewhere, for example in the Middle East. Our ability to work together in Europe is also clearly on the line.
Needless to say, the Commission will discharge its responsibilities as best it can. While I do not believe it is helpful to go into detail about the planning we have done to cater for a serious humanitarian crisis – for example, I was discussing this last autumn in Jordan – I can assure honourable Members that we will react with the generosity for which the Parliament is ultimately responsible and with the commitment and professionalism that the Parliament would expect of us. I make this point very, very strongly: it will be easier for us to act, should we be required to act, if we can do so with the authority of the United Nations covering our activities. I think I owe it to all those who work for the European Commission in the front line in providing humanitarian assistance, and to those who work for non-governmental organisations, very often in dangerous circumstances. If we have to talk in the future about humanitarian activities and about what is described in the jargon as the humanitarian space, then I say strongly to this Parliament that it is far easier and far better to have UN authority covering that humanitarian space than to go ahead without it.
Earlier I mentioned speaking in the last Parliamentary session on North Korea and I will not repeat all that I said to the Foreign Affairs Committee on that occasion, but I do recognise the seriousness of the situation in North Korea. I was in Pyongyang with the High Representative and the Swedish Prime Minister almost two years ago. I think that we played a useful role, without exaggerating what we were capable of doing. In my judgment, the only way this crisis can be resolved is through diplomacy, through expecting more of the DPRK, on this occasion in relation to nuclear promises in response to a greater commitment by the international community to welcome North Korea into the real world. Since I think it is only through diplomacy that we can actually resolve that crisis, I do think there may be a role for the European Union to play in the coming weeks. That, I am glad to say, was the decision reached by the General Affairs and External Relations Council on Monday and Tuesday. I am sure this will not be the last occasion on which we debate soberly these difficult issues, soberly but with a passion which I hope will be sometimes constrained in its rhetorical expression by the grave and serious issues that we are discussing.
Plainly, not everything has gone so well. Perhaps the greatest failure in trying to create a global rule-book has been our collective failure to establish an adequate regime for controlling and preventing the spread of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons – that terrible arsenal of unimaginable horror.
Today we face some of the consequences in three of the world's most worrying trouble spots: in Kashmir, in the Korean peninsular and in the Gulf. How can we deal with these problems? This was a point discussed in considerable detail in the Foreign Affairs Committee last week. Clearly, we have to mobilise the greatest international commitment and the broadest authority for what we want to do. That is why it must be sensible to base our approach in dealing with these problems on the moral and legal authority of the United Nations. I think the whole of the European Parliament would believe that it was right to try to do that.
Everyone knows that, for years, Saddam Hussein has defied the authority of the United Nations over his manufacture, possession and use of weapons of mass destruction. In addition, he has an appalling record on human rights. In May last year, this Parliament adopted a resolution based on a report by Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne which outlined the clear evidence concerning the brutal and oppressive nature of his regime. The report illustrated clearly how Saddam normally deals with Iraqi citizens, with his neighbours and with the international community. We know, for example, that he has used chemical weapons on his own people.
After years of defying the authority of the United Nations, posing a threat to the region and to the whole world, he was given a final chance to cooperate in disarming his country by United Nations Security Council resolution 1441. A team of 260 staff members from 60 countries, of whom 100 are UNMOVIC inspectors, has been working in Iraq since 27 November 2002 under Dr Blix. Besides UNMOVIC, there is also the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) team under Dr El Baradei.
Since the resumption of IAEA inspections, 139 inspections have been carried out on 106 sites, including two presidential sites. I just mention, in passing, that anybody who has met the inspectors – for example, anybody who has met Dr Blix – will have been extremely impressed by the integrity and professionalism of those leading this UN operation.
I do not want to pronounce on the debate which is being held today in the Security Council. As I am regularly reminded, the Commission is not a Member State. We do, of course, contribute to the development of the common foreign and security policy. We deploy the instruments within our competence to make it more effective. Many of the issues we are discussing go to the heart of the debate about national sovereignty, which some appear to think has been solved by the proposal to create a full-time President of the Council."@en1
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"(Laughter and Applause)"1
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