Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-01-29-Speech-3-106"
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"en.20030129.5.3-106"2
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".
Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, before commenting on the question of the exploitation of the wealth of the Congo, I should like to say that, by reason of my position, and I speak here for the presidency of the Council, I am obliged to respect the presence and the
of the European Parliament and I shall do just that. I wonder if the European Parliament might find a way of establishing some sort of mutual respect or paying heed to the issues that arise from the functioning of the presidency, bearing in mind that the Greek Presidency will have to go back to Greece at some point within the not too distant future. In all events, even if Parliament cannot find a way and cannot abide by a few rules, we shall abide by them, as befits our position.
Now on the question of the illegal exploitation of the wealth of the Congo, I have this to say: the international community has started to evince a keen interest in the illegal exploitation of natural resources in Africa over recent years, especially where they are used to fund long-term, catastrophic armed conflicts.
The chairman of the United Nations Security Council made a statement in June 2000 calling on the Secretary-General of the United Nations to set up a committee of experts to investigate the illegal exploitation of the natural resources of the Democratic Republic of Congo. This committee was set up and started work in September 2000 and published its final report in October 2002, in which it points out that high-ranking political, military and business figures in Uganda, Rwanda and Zimbabwe, as well as the Congo, are plundering the natural – mainly mineral – wealth of the Congo on a massive scale for personal gain or, in the case of Rwanda, for their country’s benefit. At the same time, again according to the committee’s findings, Rwanda is funding its massive military budget mainly from resources taken from the Congo, occasionally using forced local labour.
The European Union has refrained from passing a resolution on this recent report by the committee of experts until the Security Council does so. However, the European Union is in favour of introducing a ban and of imposing sanctions as and where necessary, preferably through the United Nations Security Council, rather than by individual countries or groups of countries. As far as one particularly controversial product is concerned – so-called blood diamonds – both the international community and the European Union have taken specific action. To be precise, thirty-seven countries and the European Parliament finalised a certification process for uncut diamonds at Interlaken in Switzerland in November 2002, the so-called Kimberley process, precisely in a bid to fight the trade in illegally mined diamonds from conflict zones, especially in Africa. The European Union also adopted Council resolution 2368/2002 on the application of the Kimberley certification process on 20 December, which is when it became operational.
I should like to finish by pointing out that there is a basic vicious circle here that needs to be broken. Internal armed conflict opens the way for the illegal exploitation of the basic wealth of a country and in turn this wealth is exploited to perpetuate the internal armed conflict and the lack of development and stability mechanisms in the country."@en1
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