Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-01-29-Speech-3-013"
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"en.20030129.2.3-013"2
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"Mr President, Mr Solana, Commissioner Patten, ladies and gentlemen, if we are to decide between war and peace, we must conduct our debate with the greatest seriousness, but also with confidence in ourselves. The wisdom of old Europe, this continent of ours, lies in its capacity for repeated renewal, and we should be telling all those who cast doubt on our credentials, that the policy of uniting Europe is the greatest peace movement on the European continent – old, yet ever renewing itself – and that perhaps other regions in the world will find it an example of peaceful coexistence.
Ladies and gentlemen, we must also, however, keep reminding ourselves of the logic involved. The discussion we had with Dr Blix yesterday touched on this. Logic cannot require the inspectors to travel the length and breadth of Iraq to look to see where something might be. It is far more logical for the Iraqi regime to do as Resolution 1441 requires and actually open the gates, so that Dr Blix and his team do not have to virtually grope their way through Iraq with a glimmering lamp. On the contrary, as Mr Solana has said and as is stated in Resolution 1441, what is required is genuinely active cooperation by the regime in Baghdad. That is what we have to insist on, ladies and gentlemen.
We hear the President's White House spokesman saying, ‘either he disarms or he will be disarmed’, and so we urge Saddam Hussein to delay no longer in playing his part in this. Let me quote Hans Blix, who said, on one occasion, that ‘it does not, to date, appear that Iraq has really accepted the demand for disarmament’, and on another, that paragraph 9 of Resolution 1441 requires that cooperation be ‘active’. Simply opening doors is not enough. There are questions that Hans Blix has raised, and which we also have to put before the public: what about the anthrax, which is a biological weapon? What became of the 8 500 litres of it? What about the VX, a toxic chemical weapon on which further development work has been done?
If Iraq really has disarmed as it claims to have done, it would have been right and proper and in line with international law for this to have been done under UN supervision, as prescribed by the documents and the resolutions. I hope that Iraq will be more cooperative over the coming days and weeks.
Ladies and gentlemen, on Monday the Council of European Union Foreign Ministers decided, quite rightly, to call for complete disarmament, but we have to take the middle way – and everyone knows the difficult position Europeans are in. Our slogan cannot be ‘right or wrong, always America!’
That is a road down which we cannot go, but neither can we go down the road of saying that, no matter what Iraq's response may be, the Iraqi dictator will go unpunished, and that we will not play our part!
To do so would be like saying to someone bent upon murder, ‘please don't commit murder, but if you do, there will be no criminal proceedings anyway’. That is why we have to keep up the pressure!
What we demand of the US Government is that, if our American partners and friends have intelligence derived from secret service operations, this must also be laid out to public view in the Security Council, so that we may really be in full possession of the facts. People have to be informed, and so we are very decidedly of the opinion that Iraq must dispose of any weapons of mass destruction that it possesses. We want to achieve this through the United Nations, and we want to achieve it by peaceful means!
What I ask, ladies and gentlemen, is that we should respect each other's points of view. It is certain that we will come to different conclusions on one thing or another, but each of us expresses opinions founded on his or her own convictions, and then we have to see to it that we take the right path. It is quite clear to us in the Group of the European People's Party and European Democrats that we have to make every conceivable effort and attempt to secure world peace and peace in the Middle East – in so far as this is the nub of the problem. That must be our concern; it is that for which we must work, and the United Nations is the framework within which we must do it.
Ladies and gentlemen, even if the use of force in the form of warfare may never be more than the last resort, and though our endeavours must be guided by peace, we have to deal with the facts as they are presented to us.
What we have to deal with in Iraq is a criminal system under a dictator and tyrant alleged to have weapons of mass destruction at his disposal – and that is the problem. He is a mass murderer and a war criminal, who, as Commissioner Patten has mentioned, has, in particular, used chemical weapons against his own people, against the Kurds. In 1980, he declared war on Iran, and in 1990 he invaded Kuwait. I take a thoroughly critical line on the United States too, but, ladies and gentlemen, if the United States had not, at that time, led the coalition that liberated Kuwait, might this same dictator not have been able to include the other Arab countries in his expansionist designs? That, too, is something we must bear in mind today. His regime uses its secret services to oppress his own people with violence, murder and terror.
Ladies and gentlemen, weapons of mass destruction in the hands of Saddam Hussein and his regime are a menace to the region as a whole and to the international community. Whatever the need to be frank when talking to our American friends, it has to be said that the heart of the problem is not the USA, but Saddam Hussein's criminal regime in Baghdad.
Ladies, gentlemen, friends, because Iraq, with which we find ourselves dealing in the present situation, is an Arab country, we are also saying loud and clear to the Arab and Muslim world that we want cooperation, we want partnership, and we want friendship – if at all possible – with all Arab and Muslim states, and this must be one of the key fundamentals of European Union policy.
I wish to extend warm thanks not only to Mr Solana and Commissioner Patten, but also to all those who are working hard in these difficult days and weeks, and I wish to thank the President of Parliament, Mr Cox, for facilitating yesterday's discussion with Hans Blix, from which I learned a very great deal. We agreed that this discussion would be confidential – it could scarcely have taken place had we not done so – but I agree, and our group agrees, that many years have passed since 1990, in which the international community has taken no real action against Saddam Hussein, and so, if we are to achieve the peaceful solution for which we hope, we have to keep up the pressure of recent months, which he is now coming to feel.
This has to be a window for peace; it must also mean – and it is to be hoped that it does – that our American partners and friends have not yet decided on military action against Iraq. We have to be open to a truly peaceful solution, which must be reached through the United Nations."@en1
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