Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-11-14-Speech-3-072"
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"en.20011114.3.3-072"2
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"Mr President, in the time available, as Mr Salafranca will understand, I would like to concentrate on paragraph 7 of the resolution on the urgent and overriding need to keep support for the peace process in Colombia as a priority within this strategy.
In particular I want to state two points. First, that the pledge made by President Pastrana personally to this Parliament on the dismantling of paramilitary groups has not been, and is not being, honoured. So say the UN special representative on human rights, the Mexican observer commission and the relations of ten fishermen killed in Santa Marta, and of the 18 people forced face down on to the ground and shot dead by paramilitaries in Buga within the last month alone. This is a continued gross abuse of human rights and, as my own UK ambassador has said, in these troubled times the guerrillas and the paramilitaries are both terrorist groups and should be combated through all means as part of the current anti-terrorist programme. We feel that particularly due to the killing of the British backpacker Jeremy Parks on 28 October.
The Belgian Presidency rightly included action against paramilitaries as one of its four priorities in Colombia, in August of this year. Could the Commissioner please tell us in his reply what progress is being made as a result of the pressure that is being applied.
Secondly, we support Commissioner Patten's proposal for a peace laboratory at Magdalena Medio. It is a major contribution towards the peace process, in contrast to the American military aid in Plan Colombia, which we have roundly condemned. But this Magdalena Medio region has been subject to an incursion by those same guerrillas. They are there, threatening campesinos that they must plant coca or they will die. They are there running their own businesses, having their own taxes and they want to co-opt NGOs to ensure that our European money goes to them to undermine the peace process rather than to support it. I call on the Commissioner now to show how he will introduce control and verification mechanisms so that our European money will achieve progress in the peace process, and not be abused by the paramilitaries to undermine our very aims."@en1
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