Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-01-29-Speech-4-122"
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"en.20040129.5.4-122"2
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"Secretary-General, Liberal Democrats and Reformers in this House echo your words on immigration. We recognise the value that immigrants bring to Europe and we understand that closing Europe's front door will only drive the desperate to seek access through the back. Many of us were migrants once upon a time and we know how ill it behoves our generation to shut the gates of mercy on mankind. A Europe of security and justice for all is a Europe that extends those rights to those who justly seek a new life here. Like you, we recognise the political challenge that implies.
Your words today remind us of the power of the United Nations to transcend the parochial in us all. The United Nations has a precious power to speak for us all. That is why my Group wishes to see the return of the United Nations to Iraq as soon as the security situation allows. Credible and legitimate democratic government in Iraq is not possible without the presence of the United Nations.
We want a political settlement in Iraq that guarantees the highest standards of civil and political rights for all Iraqis.
The United Nations was founded by the same generation who founded this European Union – ‘to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind’. Like this Union it believes that the closer we sit at the table of peace and prosperity, the slower we will be to reach for the tools of war. It is a sorry testament to a stubborn world that the UN still seems such an unlikely experiment in international governance.
Winston Churchill once said that the UN is designed not to take us to heaven, but to save us from hell. In order to do that better the UN must reform. As its largest contributors, the EU and its Member States have not only the weight to insist on reform but the responsibility to do so. A mature Europe would find the political will to put behind it an institutional settlement at the UN that leaves power where it lay in 1945. A mature Europe would insist on a permanent membership that reflected the realities of the 21st century. It would accept that the current veto is a tool of obstruction, a privilege that can no longer be justified.
Finally, Secretary-General, on behalf of the Liberal Group allow me to pay tribute to the members of your organisation who will not see you take this prize in their name today. Your staff who lost their lives with Sergio Vieira de Mello – including Fiona Watson who was known to me – died defending a vision of national renewal in Iraq that is now our duty."@en1
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