Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-06-14-Speech-4-120"
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"en.20010614.6.4-120"2
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"Mr President, as everyone knows, the leaders of the EU and the American President are meeting in Göteborg today. Obviously some of the things they will air are their differences about the Kyoto Protocol on the environment and global warming and about the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which needs updating.
But there is another important matter, however, which has received very little publicity and to which this debate is designed to draw attention. It is the six-year negotiations that are nearing completion to update the 1972 Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention. The problem with the 1972 convention is that while it banned production of biological weapons it contained no means of verifying whether they were being produced on the quiet.
Despite six years of negotiation, it now appears that the new US Administration is backing off and is unwilling to support the terms that have been negotiated to date, including by its own predecessors. In the widespread opinion of this House, the presidential elections last November did not suggest that the American people wanted a wholesale change in government policy, but favoured a continuation of the previous policy. Nevertheless, there are now very alarming signals that the Americans may not support the work that has been done so far. If that is the case, and if there is no final agreement on containing biological and toxic weapons, what kind of message will it send out to what President Bush calls the ‘rogue’ states of the world?
We cannot get involved in the negotiations but the most important thing we can do – and I hope the House will agree – is to give strong support to the EU negotiating team and say to the Americans: ‘come on, sign up, we need this agreement’."@en1
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