Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-10-25-Speech-3-245"
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"en.20061025.23.3-245"2
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"Mr President, the Republic of Moldova would, in nine and a half weeks’ time, be becoming a Member State of the European Union, had it not been for the Hitler-Stalin Pact under which it was separated from Romania, and that shows just how close to us this whole business is. Georgia – which is a member of the Council of Europe – fell victim to Russian or Soviet colonialism on two occasions, the first time under the Tsars, and the second in the 1920s, when Soviet troops smothered the nations of the Caucasus at birth.
What we have today is a post-colonial situation in which Russia is unwilling to make restitution for what it did to the region in the days when it was a colonial power or when it was the totalitarian Soviet Union, and is instead engaged in a post-colonial policy of dominating nations and extorting their raw materials from them, which involves it in either exploiting conflicts between nationalities or, to some extent, artificially creating them.
It is for that reason that there is only one response; as Mr Landsbergis said, we have to be prepared to have a structured, peace-keeping presence – be it international or European – wherever in the world conflict arises, whether in Transnistria or Abkhazia, South Ossetia or Chechnya, so that the situation can be brought under international control once and for all.
If Russia has an interest in allowing transparency to prevail, then that is the right solution, but that is not what Russia wants. What Russia wants, now as in the past, is for its policy of dominance to be carried on in the shadows, and that is why I, too, find it regrettable that this report is being held after the summit rather than having been held before it, as we had wanted. What Mr Putin wanted was for the spotlight to be upon him as he nurtured illusions, and, now, in the shadow of the summit, we are sweeping up the pieces.
All I can do is to appeal to the Council and the Commission to at length get round to talking about Russian policy in an unambiguous, frank, and rational way with explicit reference to human rights. Let no bones be made about the fact that that sort of forthright talk is the only language Russia understands. We have here not only enough material for a white paper on Russia’s broken promises, as Mr Landsbergis said, but also enough for one on the West’s self-deception."@en1
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