Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-01-29-Speech-3-025"

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"Mr President, Mr Solana, Mr Vice-President of the Commission, I will begin with a quotation, one which sums up like no other statement our position on the war against Iraq: ‘A preventive war is an act of aggression, and cannot be described as a just war in self-defence. For the right to self-defence presupposes not merely the possibility of an attack, but that an attack is actually happening or is imminent. Warfare with the aim of averting danger would nullify international law's prohibition of force, promote political instability and, in the final analysis, shatter the foundations of the whole system of an international community of states.’ And elsewhere in the same statement: ‘Any security strategy committing itself to preventive warfare is in defiance both of Catholic teaching and of international law.’ These quotations are from the statement on the Iraq conflict issued, on 20 January of this year, by the Conference of German Bishops. As my Christian Democrat opposite number has not made reference to the Conference of Catholic Bishops, I have to do so, and do not think that these statements require anything to be added to them. All the time I have known you, Mr Solana, I have regarded you as a great optimist, so when you say, as you have done today, that the political situation is bad, then the political situation is very bad. Donald Rumsfeld, the American minister for war, spoke of ‘old Europe’. All of us who have spoken here today have declared that we belong to this old Europe, and that would not be cause for any further excitement on our part, had he not drawn the distinction between us and the ‘new Europe’ – those whose opinions are identical with Mr Rumsfeld's and who think along the same lines as he does. President Kwasniewski of Poland said in an interview last week, ‘If it is President Bush's vision, it is mine!’ The Polish President is of course entitled to as narrow a field of vision as he may choose, but there is no doubt that the Polish government – like all the governments of the other candidate countries – is under an obligation to act in solidarity with the European Union, to which they want to belong. The candidate countries have decided of their own free will to belong to the European Union, and we wish to welcome them, but, when it comes to issues of war and peace, preventive warfare and the setting-aside of international law, we expect them to be solidly alongside us."@en1
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