Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-09-07-Speech-3-150"
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"en.20050907.18.3-150"2
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"Mr President, the Middle East continues to be without equal as a crisis hotspot after the USA presented Iraq as its model example of how to democratise and liberalise the Islamic world, and as a way of, so to speak, solving all problems with a single stroke. It was an experiment intended to stabilise the region, secure access to oil and facilitate disarmament and demilitarisation, but it failed, and the war against terrorism, having driven a wedge between the European allies, is seen by the Arab world as a strategic campaign to secure oil supplies.
Fanatics were able to depict the American occupation as a war on the Islamic world. Bush has not only left a country in ruins but has also created a breeding ground for more terrorist training camps. The American intervention was nothing more than a badly-prepared occupation, embarked on as a sort of solo act; they underestimated both the potential for resistance and the costs involved – the latter of which they now want their partners, such as us Europeans, to cover after the event.
For the problem of Israel and the Palestinians, too, no real solution is yet in sight. Although the evacuation of the Gaza Strip and the seeking of a two-state solution appear to have injected some impetus into the peace process, which has dragged on for decades, its success will largely be dependent on the economic success of the new structure, and that is where Europe will, no doubt, have to help out.
Most disturbing of all is the nuclear weapons race in this region, for which the problematic existence of Israel’s nuclear arsenal is always cited as a pretext. The consequence of this is that Arabs have become convinced that the USA, in any case of doubt, will always take Israel’s side, and nuclear weaponry has become more attractive as a prestige project. Where weapons of mass destruction are concerned, an inherent momentum has developed, scarcely capable of being held in check and spurring neighbouring states to acquire weapons of this type, so that the Middle East remains a region with the potential to threaten the world as a whole.
Europe may well, at present, be outside the range of rockets from the Middle East, but our also becoming a target is only a matter of time. This means that the EU must redouble its efforts in the Middle East, but Turkish accession will do nothing to stabilise the region, one reason for this being that Islamists do not, whatever some Europeans might hope, accept Turkey as a mediator and channel for communication."@en1
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