Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-02-12-Speech-3-174"
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"en.20030212.5.3-174"2
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"Mr President, last week I went to New York with a delegation from this Parliament, and there we had, I must say, impressive discussions with Dr Hans Blix and Kofi Annan, but we, as a delegation, were also witness to a shameful performance in which four ambassadors from EU countries that are members of the Security Council made not the slightest effort to hide their differences. That was humiliating, but was it inevitable? It is not clear. I know that it will be extremely difficult to reach agreement at next Monday’s summit of European leaders, but I refuse to accept that this is inevitable. There are the French proposals to increase the number and power of the inspectors. Next Friday, there will probably be a cautiously positive report from Dr Hans Blix and Mohamed El Baradei in favour of doing just that.
I would therefore make an urgent plea to the governments of Great Britain, Spain and Italy to stop playing the role of yes men to the United States and to at last seize the very real chances we still have to disarm Iraq by peaceful means. I urge those same governments not to turn their backs on Europe. Many Members have said this already this afternoon: all the opinion polls in all the European countries point to one thing: it is not the French government, not the German government and not the Belgian government that have become isolated; instead it is Tony Blair, José María Aznar and Silvio Berlusconi that have lost touch with European reality. To the Eurosceptics in this Parliament, and also to the United States, who are quite happy about this discord among the EU Member States and see it as proof that it is unlikely that anything will ever come of one joint European policy, I would say this: this Parliament is a European institution that, in its pronouncement in its last resolution, gave a voice to the vast majority of the European population and that voice says ‘no war’. I sincerely hope, therefore, that, next Monday, that voice of the vast majority of the European population resounds in the heads and hearts of the European Heads of Government, too."@en1
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