Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-03-14-Speech-3-187"
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"en.20070314.17.3-187"2
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".
Madam President, our fellow Members, Mr Bonsignore and Mrs Napoletano, have just made the point that, at the end of this week, the representatives of the coastal populations of both shores of the Mediterranean will meet again in this forum – happily now a parliamentary assembly – where they have endeavoured, since its founding, to develop relationships of trust, of which you, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, have rightly stressed the importance.
This will be our first meeting in plenary since the Lebanese tragedy, in which Europe, in my view, remained silent for too long and in which it finally intervened in a disorganised manner, on the initiative of this or that Member State. However, we know full well that it was the Union itself, as the heir to the humanist and cultural values that we know and bolstered by its economic power and demographic dimension, that was expected to play an intervention role at first, and a mediation role thereafter. Back then, the time had perhaps still not come to make the Union’s voice heard; it is perhaps a better time to do so now.
Mr Solana, our high representative, was in Beirut the day before yesterday. He was received yesterday by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia; today, he is due to meet with the Syrian President, Bachar Al-Assad.
I hope that these moves will help strengthen the hope born out of the recent diplomatic initiatives, which would seem at last to bode well for a calming of the situation. A calming of the situation in Lebanon, after the meeting between the prime minister and the head of parliament; a calming of the situation in Palestine, after the agreement reached in Mecca between Fatah and Hamas; and the first signs of calm throughout the Middle East after the first international conference in Baghdad, last Saturday.
It is under these auspices that we must continue to develop parliamentary diplomacy in Tunis. Such diplomacy will, I hope, enable us to bring together our Israeli and Palestinian colleagues who, since our last plenary session, a year ago, have barely had the invaluable opportunity to meet and exchange opinions with the aim of conquering this disease of mutual fear, which their two peoples have had to suffer so much."@en1
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