Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-04-23-Speech-4-412"
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"en.20090423.66.4-412"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, the existence of thousands of nuclear weapons is the most dangerous legacy of the Cold War. These are not my words; they are taken from the speech given by President Obama in Prague recently on the biggest threat facing us. No other issue is more crucial to security in the 21st century.
We have heard similar words in recent years, for example from US strategists Kissinger and Sam Nunn, who have set out a specific path to a world without nuclear weapons. High-ranking European politicians have joined in and even the UN Secretary General has set out a 5-point disarmament plan. It has never been a better time to finally start talking once again about nuclear disarmament.
In recent years, let us not forget, there have only been setbacks. Negotiations at the NPT Review Conference in 2005 were a disaster. This must not be repeated next year. We Europeans must demonstrate now that we are serious about disarmament. If the EU moves forward, it can set the standard, which is why I completely fail to understand why the majority in this House obviously does not want to support these ambitious aims of reducing weapons of mass destruction.
The plethora of proposed amendments by the conservative group in the Committee on Foreign Affairs turned my report and its aim of talking about disarmament and tabling a recommendation to the Council on its head and turned it into a limp rag of a text. As Parliament we have a responsibility to take a stand now and we cannot relegate it to a later date or to other parliaments.
We are lobbying for support for the Nuclear Weapons Convention and the Hiroshima-Nagasaki Protocol, because disarmament is possible. It is not some stupid, far-off illusion. We can do it, if we force the issue. The documents that we want do not conflict with the NPT; they plug a hole in the NPT and hence strengthen it. We need a clear political statement and that is my call to all the groups for tomorrow’s vote: to reconsider today what is the right way forward.
I know that the NPT also comprises civil elements, but we are not talking today about the renaissance of civil nuclear power; we are talking about nuclear disarmament. As chairman of the delegation for relations with Iran and spokeswoman on foreign policy, I would also say that anyone who has not learned from the Iran crisis over recent years, which has often put us in danger of military escalation, that the civil use of nuclear power cannot be divorced from military abuse and proliferation, has failed to understand the entire foreign policy of recent years, the dangers and our nuclear disarmament challenge.
We all know that our objective cannot be achieved overnight, but we need to make a start. We cannot spend decades demanding nuclear disarmament of the Americans – with full unanimity – and now, when President Obama says he is prepared to do so, where President Medvedev says he is prepared to do so, a conservative majority in this Parliament refuses to follow this path. That is why I should like to urge you once again in all earnestness, as instructed by the Committee on Foreign Affairs, not to confuse the question of the civil use of nuclear power with a revival of the potential for nuclear disarmament. Anyone who shuts this window of opportunity for nuclear disarmament will not be in a position to say when another one will open. I would ask anyone who votes tomorrow against the PSE’s and our proposed amendments to tell his voters in the electoral campaign why he thinks nuclear weapons in Europe are a good thing."@en1
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