Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-09-04-Speech-1-171"
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Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I thought at first that I would not reply to the speeches in which some doubts were expressed about my neutrality regarding the problems in the Congo. I shall reply, however, because the comments have occasionally been very excessive.
You made reference to a Belgian business that has developed in the copper sector. I suppose you are referring to the business owned by Mr Forrest. I cite this because it was pointed out that one of my sons was married to Mr Forrest’s daughter, that they were directors of Mr Forrest’s companies and that I was therefore related to Mr Forrest. In my life I have only met Mr Forrest three times for a few seconds, and I was in the company of a Belgian parliamentary delegation. Mr Forrest creates 630 jobs through his company; he creates hospitals and schools: a whole social system is developing there. I am not defending Mr Forrest personally; I do not know if he is honest or not, I am simply observing. What I do know is that a Belgian journalist carried out an investigation on Mr Forrest and that he became a supporter of Mr Forrest, simply because he creates jobs. Out of the 630 people whom he employs in his business, there are 600 Congolese. I am not defending Mr Forrest, I do not know him well, I have met him three times in my life for a few seconds. I have therefore had enough of this sort of attack which – it has to be said – borders on nastiness and which I cannot let pass.
I can assure you of one thing: I am completely impartial, I have contacts with everyone in the Congo and I am proud of having doubtless been one of the first - well before 1999, when I was still leader of the opposition in my country - to try to mobilise the international community to finally take an interest in this country. Why? Simply because, as someone said in this House, there have been almost 4 million victims in Central Africa in ten years. This figure cannot be compared with those of other world conflicts. That is why I have always thought that it was my duty as a politician to concern myself with the Congo. That is true, Mr Pflüger.
The second reason why I am so engaged in the Congo is that I am Belgian and thus, in a way, I feel inspired by a kind of historical memory. As a Belgian, it is not so much that I felt responsible, but rather I felt indebted to the Congolese population. It is thus true that I feel a particular attachment to the Congolese population, without doubt because I have this recollection of a certain collective bad conscience and because I still have this old conception of morality which consists of rereading the history of my country and of my people in an intellectually honest way. This is why, when I was the Foreign Affairs Minister, we visited the Rwandans to apologise. This is something that others have not done yet, and I regret this. This is the reason why, as regards the political assassination of Mr Lumumba for example, I also apologised in the name of my country to Mr Lumumba’s family. I do not therefore need a lesson in ethics, and you may organise all the investigations you wish into my activities. The same people who claimed that I was biased have also claimed that I was the owner of a diamond mine in the Congo, that I bought a villa on the river - in short, it is all gossip-mongering.
The only excuse you have for such an excessive reaction - and this does not correspond with my definition of intellectual honesty - is that you do not, I think, know the Congo very well. Perhaps you have been to the Congo, perhaps not, I do not know, but in any case you have an image of the Congo partially distorted by the excesses of certain parties who use any old argument in the campaign. There is populism in the Congo too, it exists everywhere, it even exists in our countries. Sometimes it even exists in this Parliament, and I regret this.
This is what I meant about neutrality: hearing a chorus of people repeating that the Commission is not neutral is ultimately tiresome. To the accusation: ‘you have not been neutral’, I reply: ‘we have been perfectly neutral’. Mr Kabila is annoyed with me because we did not denounce the excesses in the debate on ‘being Congolese’; Mr Bemba is annoyed with me because, in my capacity as Foreign Affairs Minister and as Commissioner, I would meet President Kabila. When I go to the Congo, whom do you want me to speak to if not the head of state. Of course it was necessary for me to meet Mr Kabila. However, if there is one thing that proves my neutrality, it is that I have never been to the Congo, not once, without meeting Mr Kabila and the four Vice-Presidents who make up the presidential milieu. I have taken my sense of neutrality even further. I have systematically sought contact with Mr Tshisekedi. Somebody mentioned women; I have met representatives from the whole of civil society, I have met everyone. It is true that I am probably someone who has quite an important network of information in the Congo, and I pride myself on having been able to play a modest role in the transitional process.
In this connection, people bore grudges against me because I supported the transitional process until the end, but there was no solution other than to support this process. Mr Tshisekedi and the UDPS, who denounced the transitional process, had signed the Pretoria Agreement, they had signed the Agreement underpinning the transitional process. Afterwards, I had the impression that this party chose the policy of making things worse, that it had decided that the transition was not going to succeed, so that an alternative was needed and that this was the best way to gain power. Personally, I can do nothing. I do not think I can be blamed for the fact that the party withdrew from a process that it had supported and to which it had signed up. I simply hoped that all the active political forces would participate in the election. Unfortunately this did not occur, and I regret this.
This chapter is now closed. If I truly felt that I should resign, I would not wait for anyone to ask me. Perhaps I am a little old-fashioned in this respect. I still believe in political responsibility, but this sense of responsibility should work both ways: it should affect the person who has responsibility and the person who exposes the way in which that responsibility has been exercised. Now, if you criticise the way in which someone has exercised political responsibility, your criticism should be based on real points. You cannot just say anything. I am prepared to argue for a long time about this and I cannot accept the accusations made against me. These affect me deeply because, for years now, the basic intention underlying my political commitment has been, precisely, to try to help this fine country and fine people to escape from the poverty and confusion towards which – it has to be said - the international community has shown complete indifference, if not disdain.
As for the army, I have noted what was said with great interest and I obviously agree for the most part with the various speeches that have been made. I agree with Mrs Gomes when she says that the reform of the army will be an extremely important point. More or less half of this reform has already been achieved. I would simply like to point out that it was necessary to reduce the army concerned, or rather the assemblage of different troops and militias amounting to roughly 330 000 soldiers – I do not know if you can imagine this - down to 100 000 men, also taking into account the fact that, for example, the process of demobilisation and reintegration attracted fake soldiers who joined in because they wanted to profit from this process. To reduce such an army is therefore much more easily said than done. It is easy to talk about but difficult to achieve, and a certain amount of time is required in order to carry out this process properly. I hope that the international community will continue with its commitment to aid the Congo and to reform its army. The same applies to the police. Substantial progress has, moreover, already been achieved.
Mr Schröder, I agree with almost all of what you have said and I would also like to thank you for the balanced nature of your comments with respect to the aforementioned subject. Even so, when you say that we should not debate the Congo at the moment, I myself believe that we should debate it. I think that the second round can succeed if the international community tells both candidates unequivocally that they do not have the right to sabotage the second round because that would be to insult the Congolese people’s passion for democracy. The attitude of the Congolese, this people’s enthusiasm about its historic meeting with democracy has been beautiful to see and has been the best recompense for all the European Union’s efforts. I think we must talk about this. In fact, we must not stop repeating that the second round must not be a failure and that whoever is beaten must respect the result. Whoever is beaten will also have his role to play, and the winner will have to take this into account. This is my personal conviction. Perhaps people will again reproach me for exceeding the bounds of strict neutrality, but my personal conviction is that whoever wins must have the wisdom not to act as if the other candidate did not count or as if he represented nothing. That is the approach he will have to adopt in order to revive the Congo. This is my profound belief, and the leader of the opposition will also have his role to play.
Without any sycophancy, I would to like to congratulate General Morillon for the way in which he has carried out the election observation mission up to now. I believe that he deserves a lot of credit: he has carried out his mission under extremely difficult conditions; with his considerable experience he has succeeded in seeing things in context when it has been necessary not to be absolutist, in being severe when it was necessary to be severe, and, in any case, in remaining rigorous and never straying from his course. I would genuinely like to thank him and to congratulate him.
Mr Pflüger, I would like to tell you that your conception of the law is, let us say, too hasty. In certain non-democratic countries, we still encounter these sorts of conceptions. I thought that we were safe from such conceptions as that in Europe, in any case, and especially in a Parliament as honourable as this one, which is, effectively, the guardian of democratic values such as the right to a defence, respect for proper information and objectivity based on extensive argument.
Mrs Aubert, you have asked me the following question, and with very good reason: ‘What do you plan to do?’ As I recall, this is the main point of your speech. The real response is based on what we have already debated in this House. I think that, more than ever, we must suggest and encourage projects of good governance in the Congo. You mentioned, for example, the correct and appropriate use of natural resources. We all know that the Congo is in fact a very rich country. It is creditworthy, as they say, it is a country that could ensure the prosperity and well-being of its population. The Congo has everything. In the first place, it has its people and extremely important human resources. In my view, what is needed is to recreate a genuine state, a state in the governmental sense of the word, with a working judiciary and administration, with people who are paid and who receive their salaries and with a working education system and a working health care system. I have spoken with both candidates and I have told them: rather than arguing about how Congolese you are and about all these subordinate issues which, at base, only concern your own personal interests, it would perhaps be more worthwhile to tell the Congolese how you plan to give them better access to education, justice, health, administration, culture and infrastructures; and also how you are, for example, to implement an embryonic social security system with the help of the international community. This is the real debate.
I think that what I have just said corresponds very closely to the conclusion I wanted to offer.
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I apologise for having lost track of the time. I thought that it was important to set the record straight on a number of points and to specify my hopes concerning the second round of these elections.
I would like to be very clear regarding what has been said. Mr Pflüger, all the statements that I have been making for weeks, months and even years regarding my interest in the Congo seem to have escaped you - and without doubt this is because, like others too, you have not tried to deepen your understanding of the issue. Now, I have never sided either with one candidate or the other. I still maintain very regular telephone contact with President Kabila just as much as I do with Vice-President Bemba. During the events of the 20, 21 and 22 August I intervened personally in order to calm people down, as I believe General Morillon knows. I can therefore affirm that I am in personal contact with both candidates.
For example, I can tell you that President Kabila reproaches us for not having reacted sufficiently when, in the course of the election campaign, candidates used arguments based on ethnicity or ‘being Congolese’ and made xenophobic statements. I must say as well that the strategy of certain candidates involving the denunciation of ‘the foreign candidate’ – this unfortunately forms part of certain practices - has evidently impressed the international community to such an extent that it has not reacted to what is obviously a worsening of the Congolese electoral debate, with argument based on ‘being Congolese’ or on one or other candidate belonging to the Congo.
I mention all this in order to say that I utterly and completely reject the accusations of partiality that certain people have levelled at me. I could show you more than ten interviews I have given to European or Congolese newspapers that express my perfect neutrality. I have reproached President Kabila just as much as I have reproached Vice-President Bemba and other candidates on the electoral lists.
Mr Van Hecke has had the intellectual honesty to be more thorough in the remarks he has made. Thus, several months ago I also spent a whole afternoon in the house of Mr Tshisekedi, urging him to get his supporters to register and even urging him to make use of his right to be a candidate because I thought, and I still think, that Mr Tshisekedi is a man of experience who knows the Congo well, a man with a programme that could have been revealed in order to improve the political debate.
Taking into account what I have just said, Mr Pflüger, it is a little thoughtless to accuse me of being partial simply because one day during a broadcast, in response to the question ‘what does a candidate like Mr Kabila represent?’, I answered ‘the hope of the Congo.’ If I had been asked ‘what does a candidate like Mr Bemba represent?’, I would have answered ‘the hope of the Congo’, because all those who take part in an election represent the hope of their country, in this case above all because it was the first time that an election was being held. I therefore find your tunnel vision particularly excessive. You accuse me, for example – and if we were in the Belgian national Parliament I would have immediately reacted by appealing to the Rules of Procedure in order to respond to personal comments – of protecting Belgian economic interests. Which Belgian economic interests?
One of the serious problems facing the Congo is the lack of interest from foreign investors. Moreover, it is legitimate enough for any country, for any business to deem that it has the right to seek economic or commercial partnerships with any other country, on condition that it ensures that natural resources are respected, that it prevents these resources from being pillaged – this is what foreign forces have done for a very long time and what internal forces are still doing today – and on condition that it respects basic economic ethics, a factor that, unfortunately or fortunately, must be taken into account in the open world with which we are familiar.
I therefore ask the question: which economic interests? Today, the economic interests that I encounter in the Congo are Chinese, Indian, Israeli, American. This is not a reproach, not a critique, but I find few, very few European economic interests, Mr Pflüger. The truth has rights, and I must tell you that I would hope that European businesses would invest in a country like the Congo. It needs such investment."@en1
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