Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-11-19-Speech-3-031"
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"en.20081119.3.3-031"2
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"Mr President, honourable Members, Commissioner Ferrero-Waldner, many thanks for this very interesting debate.
We are fully aware of the appeal made in Parliament to the European Union to deploy a military mission in this region of the Republic of Congo. However, I feel I should point out that the European Union is already committed in the Republic of Congo, firstly through community aid: EUR 50 million in 2008, then EUR 6 million in emergency aid as mentioned by Benita Ferrero-Waldner. There are two ESDP missions supporting reform of the Congolese police and army, whose unpreparedness and lack of efficiency were, as we have seen in this case, only too tragic. Moreover, the European Union has already intervened, this was back in 2003 via a military mission referred to as Artemis. However, the conditions were different since, at that time, the European Union was preparing the way for the arrival of a United Nations mission, which then took place.
Therefore, beyond rhetoric, how can we respond to the tragedy in this region? The quickest solution to address the humanitarian crisis would be to strengthen the existing measures, in other words MONUC, through a broader mandate and additional manpower. I mean that, in the case of France, it is ready to participate in this reinforcement because if we wait for the deployment of a European Union mission, we run the risk of losing time. As you know, the Union is already committed in Chad and the Central African Republic, so there is the problem of deployment and, to put my point quite clearly, a number of States within the Council would not, at this time, be able to participate in these reinforcement operations.
As several speakers have pointed out, reinforcing MONUC would offer advantages since its mandate is based on Chapter 7 of the United Nations Charter. We must also consider that the halting of the Nkunda offensive on 29 October has enabled MONUC to begin redeployment. The next stage for the United Nations mission is to reconfigure with new elite troops, in particular, the Indian Ghurkhas expected this month. 3 000 men need to be added to the 17 000 men already present, and this was the thrust of the steps we undertook in New York at the Security Council over the last few days.
However, as several speakers have indicated, we cannot stop at the military situation alone since, faced with the atrocities which, as many have pointed out, have been going on for far too long, priority must be given to a political solution, as the visits by Commissioner Michel, Bernard Kouchner and David Miliband have shown, to enable contact to be resumed between the protagonists in the region. Priority must be given to the negotiations conducted within the African framework, whether this is the African Union, SADC or the Great Lakes Conference, to revive the Goma and Nairobi processes.
In the longer term, the Union must help the Republic of Congo to equip itself with a real army, there is no real army, it is totally dilapidated, enabling it to ensure the security of the country which is vast and very difficult to control and to prevent further humanitarian crises.
I share the opinions of those who have stated that we also need to tackle the causes of the conflict and this is what the Council has done, on 10 November, in its call to combat the illegal exploitation of the natural resources of the region by rebel groups in particular. Should this task of monitoring the fight against illegal exploitation be entrusted to MONUC? The question is open, but faced with a humanitarian crisis situation, and several others have also stressed this, MONUC’s priority must be protection of the civilian population and I believe that what is important, and this has also been stated, is that one of the solutions to the plundering of resources must be found at regional level in order to put a stop to the exploitation and exportation of these resources to our countries.
Finally, I note that we should indeed execute the resolutions made by the United Nations panel on these issues.
Those are the additional elements that I wanted to bring to the attention of this House."@en1
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