Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-02-12-Speech-3-168"
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"en.20030212.5.3-168"2
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"Mr President, I was also part of a delegation from the Verts/ALE Group which went to Iraq last week, and we would like to say to those eminent Members of Parliament who criticised the visit that it was an important and timely initiative for peace, during which we also had occasion to criticise the Iraqi Government in no uncertain terms and call for the resignation of Saddam Hussein.
There is genuine desire for peace in Iraq. It is a country devastated by sanctions, with teachers and university professors earning as little as USD 10 per month and 3 000 children a month dying of malnutrition and the lack of essential medicine. If war finally breaks out there, the only means through which the country presently survives - the Oil for Food programme – will come to an end and throw the country into massive chaos. It will create 900 000 refugees – those are not my figures, they are figures produced by the United Nations – who will flee, not to America, but to countries in the Middle East and Europe, creating an unprecedented humanitarian aid disaster.
If the human tragedy unfolding before us can be resolved peacefully – and I am heartened by the initiative of several countries now, calling for more staff resources and more time for the weapons inspectors and for the possible intervention of a UN peace keeping force – then surely that is the only alternative before us. If weapons inspectors can avoid the deaths of half a million civilians, then that is surely the only logical course of action we can consider.
This imminent war is also about human rights and democracy in Iraq. I visited a Kurdish refugee camp in Makhtur in northern Iraq, where 10 000 refugees from Turkey are captives in their own camp. They are allowed to leave the camp only under strict surveillance. The latest understanding between America and Turkey, ceding control over the whole of the devolved Kurdish territory in the north of Iraq, is a nightmare scenario in which the Kurds will again face persecution and attack. How long can the international community allow the continued suffering of the Kurdish people?
Democracy must apply to all in any new Iraqi administration: to the Kurds, the Shias and the Turkmens and, of course, to the Iraqis themselves. But it must be achieved through peaceful means, not through the bombing and killing of half a million defenceless men, women and children."@en1
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