Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-06-20-Speech-3-207"
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"en.20070620.22.3-207"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, Mrs Kratsa-Tsagaropoulou, Mrs De Keyser, ladies and gentlemen, we are here to discuss the report by Mrs Kratsa-Tsagaropoulou on the European Court of Auditors’ report on MEDA, the European programme on the countries of the Southern Mediterranean. The report before us focuses in particular on Community aid granted to Palestine.
The Court of Auditors’ report did not cover aid to Palestine. The only European institution to have carried out a thorough analysis of this financial mechanism, the Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF), has refused to reveal its report. The members of the Committee on Budgetary Control have not been shown the report, not even confidentially.
That being the case, we cannot make any guarantees on the proper use of Community funds in the country. Politically, however, we are faced with a serious dilemma; on the one hand, to provide development cooperation and humanitarian aid to people who are victims of leaders who have little or no regard for their well-being, and, on the other, to ensure that Community funds are not diverted for the purpose of purchasing arms, terrorism, propaganda, indoctrinating children in particular, racism, xenophobia and hate, and suicide bombings, as has come to light in the case of funds granted to Lebanon.
This is a question of the highest importance that requires a robust political response, based on the humanitarian conviction that all human beings are entitled to life, regardless of the religion or ethnicity to which they or their forebears belong; that is to say, a policy that is able to stand up to demagogy and hypocrisy.
I therefore wish to applaud most warmly this morning’s gesture by the Israeli authorities to grant free passage to the West Bank to hundreds of Palestinian refugees who spent several days blocked in the Eretz tunnels, having escaped from the wave of terror sweeping Gaza. I should also like to make a sincere, fraternal call to the Israeli and Egyptian authorities to make as much effort as possible to work together with international forces and with the new Palestinian Government appointed by President Abbas to rescue the Palestinians escaping persecution in Gaza, which has already cost the lives of many Gaza inhabitants.
I hope we can count, as on many occasions before, on the collaboration of the European Community Humanitarian Office (ECHO) to help alleviate the suffering in Gaza, provided this does not stop ECHO from carrying out no less urgent humanitarian actions to help Iraqi refugees not only in Syria and Jordan but also in Egypt, Lebanon and various Gulf countries.
Palestine is at the moment being targeted by a fanatical ideology that uses religion to conceal its greed for power and that is currently laying waste to Lebanon and Iraq. Anyone who still refuses to grasp this reality will once again have to face facts that it was impossible to predict."@en1
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