Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-07-02-Speech-3-131"
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"en.20030702.3.3-131"2
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"Mr President, the President-in-Office of the Council conveyed a moment ago in a positive and constructive manner that he is prepared to join forces with us. We extend a very warm welcome to you in our midst in this Parliament, Mr Frattini.
Commissioner, you also quite rightly mentioned the name of the Dutchman, Arjan Erkel, a moment ago. I am very indebted to you for this, because Arjan Erkel, the head of the
mission in Dagestan, has been missing since August last year. He was kidnapped, and it is especially important that this abduction should receive the Commission’s, and also the Council’s, attention. We know that Arjan's father has been keeping everyone informed about this case for months now, and I hope that it will have a positive outcome.
We were going to return home via Chechnya after the trip we recently made with four MEPs. I have to say that it was quite a depressing experience: compared to Bosnia and Sarajevo – I can draw a comparison with the war situation at the time – Grozny and Chechnya are actually worse off.
We, and also the Americans, in particular, have a dangerous tendency to define this Russian war in the way that suits us best, hence, along the lines of 'if you do not criticise our war, then we won't criticise yours'. We in the European Union should be careful about doing this: it is not only rebels and terrorists who are fighting the Russian armed forces, there are also others that most definitely fall within the category of resistance fighters. The Chechens are not wrong by definition, and nor are the Russians. The fact is, however, that many citizens in Chechnya, on account of the action taken by the Russian troops, tend, in their desperation, to veer to the anti-Russian camp. We ourselves were able to make out from conversations on the streets that there are justified complaints from people who saw their friends being beaten up and who therefore know that others are too scared to go to work in Grozny, because the risk of random, extremely rough action from the Russian military is enormous. We can somewhat identify with this situation if you know that many of us have a colonial history in our own countries, during which time all kinds of things happened that did not come to light until much later. In the case of Russia's action in Chechnya, matters come to light quicker, which is good. This is why I should like to urge both the Commission and the Council to employ all political and diplomatic means available to us in order to curb the violence in Chechnya. Indeed, this is desperately needed, and we cannot even be all that demanding."@en1
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