Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-07-06-Speech-3-017"
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"en.20050706.2.3-017"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, the report that has been submitted to us on the European Union’s engagement in Iraq states, as early as its first paragraph, and I quote, that we ‘need to move on from past events and to look towards the future’. In other words, keep mum about the war, those responsible for it and its consequences. This approach seems to me to be ethically irresponsible, politically suspect and strategically unrealistic.
It is ethically irresponsible. What right do we have to write off the unspeakable suffering that this war has already brought to the Iraqi people: the 100 000 innocent victims, the destruction, the total lack of security, the deprivations and the humiliation of the occupation? Let us remember once again that this war was started against the wishes of the international community and on the basis of a twofold lie: that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and that Al-Qaeda had been in the country before 2003. We can no longer regard as insignificant the legitimate anger of many Americans, British and others towards their leaders, whom they do not intend to forgive for deceiving them and drawing them into this bloody and inglorious venture.
Covering up the origins of the present fiasco would also be politically suspect. The current leaders of the Commission and the Council are precisely those who were among the most ardent supporters of the American President. Let us imagine that the vagaries of scheduling had forced the recent transatlantic summit to be put back by two weeks. We should have had a startling photo of the meeting: Mr Bush, Mr Blair and Mr Barroso, almost a repeat of the Azores Summit of 2003. Would they then have had nothing to say to us about their assessment of the consequences for Europe of the decisions they took then and the lessons that they have now learned? It would be too easy, Mr Straw, to welcome the new spirit only, in so doing, to pay off such a heavy liability. Far from eradicating terrorism, this war has transformed Iraq, according to the CIA itself – and I quote – into a terrorist laboratory where the Jihadists come to train in urban warfare, and this for maybe another twelve years, according to Mr Rumsfeld. You owe us some explanations!
Finally, I believe that it is unrealistic to believe in the lasting success of a political solution in Iraq, which would save us from condemning this war. Neither Europe nor the United Nations has the authority to provide back-up troops for occupiers in difficulties. Now is the time to send this entire battered region some strong political signals, such as a decision to proscribe all recourse to war in future as a way of resolving the world’s problems, or the implementation of the Quartet’s commitments, that have never been kept, to restore the fundamental rights of the Palestinian people, or substantial aid for the creation of civil society – and I salute the representatives of civil society who were welcomed by my group yesterday – and a totally free and sovereign authority in Iraq. Mr President, we are told that Europe urgently needs to engage in a major project and this is one!"@en1
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