Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-10-22-Speech-3-294"
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"en.20031022.13.3-294"2
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"Mr President, on 17 October, the Brussels European Council included in its conclusions a statement on Bolivia containing four points. This statement said, amongst other things, that the European Council reiterated its support for the democratically-elected government of Bolivia in its efforts to find a peaceful and constitutional solution to the current crisis and added that the European Council called on the political, social and economic forces in Bolivia to renounce violence and begin a responsible and constructive dialogue with the Bolivian Government.
This was said at a time when, as Commissioner Vitorino himself has acknowledged, the Bolivian Government had been responsible for the deaths of more than eighty citizens and for injuries to hundreds of people and material damage to their property. At that time I was ashamed to read that the European Union, together with the US Government, was one of the few sources of support left to the President who acted in such an irresponsible way, after having tried to appropriate the country’s scant natural resources.
The question I would ask the Presidency, represented by the Commission at the moment, and I am not sure whether it will be able to answer, is what kind of information the European Council had when adopting this statement, given that on that same day, before it had been possible to translate the Council’s statement into Spanish, the President of Bolivia was delivering his letter of resignation to the Bolivian National Congress. What type of representation do we have? Is there no communication between the Commission and the Council? Did the Commission not know what was happening? What kind of information was there? How could the Council have adopted this statement without the support of the Commission? In other words, we cannot act in such an irresponsible manner, because in this case the European Union has made a fool of itself.
It has made a fool of itself before the public and – I repeat – I was ashamed to read in the newspapers that we were supporting this statement, together with the United States. But the Americans behaved more intelligently, because, when they saw that things were going badly, before 17 October, they told Sánchez de Lozada to go.
Mr President, I apologise for taking such a critical tone, but I really feel hugely indignant at the moment, because it is not acceptable for our Union to be supporting this type of policy. I would like to add that I agree with Mr Salafranca that this is a time to stay calm, to support the new Bolivian Government, to do everything possible to ensure that this government succeeds, and I would like to thank the Commissioner for the information he has given me on emergency aid.
Well, I do not believe that the emergency aid will be enough. Bolivia is the poorest country in South America. Millions of country people are living in misery. The situation is truly horrendous and I believe that that country needs a very particular form of help, and we should avoid repeating past mistakes. We must not rob these poor people of the only natural resource remaining to them, having first taken silver from Bolivia and then tin."@en1
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