Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-04-11-Speech-4-173"
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"en.20020411.9.4-173"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, we have sufficient grounds for holding today’s debate on the situation in Angola with a considerably greater degree of optimism and hope than in previous debates. The rapid development of the situation and the positive prospects that are currently opening up for the country and for the Angolan people do, in fact, allow for a different approach to the country’s situation, which is now fundamentally geared towards implementing measures that will bring about the consolidation of peace and reconstruction and the development and progress of a country and of a people who have suffered inordinately as a result of decades of war.
Today, furthermore, we must emphasise and applaud the enormous steps forward already taken in this short period of time since the death of Jonas Savimbi. In particular we welcome the significance and scope of the memorandum of understanding signed on 30 March in the framework of and as a supplement to the Lusaka protocol, in addition to the amnesty proposed by the government and approved on 3 April by the National Assembly, and also the formal signing of the ceasefire, on 4 April, by the Angolan armed forces and Unita. These are measures that, in addition to the emergency programme put forward by the Government, designed to return four million displaced people to their home regions, to reintegrate the 150 thousand demobilised soldiers and ex-combatants and to rehabilitate 100 thousand people who have been mutilated and 50 thousand children orphaned by the war, make up the basic framework for launching the country into a new era.
In order for this new era to become a reality on which there can be no going back, however, what is needed now more than ever before is the support and the commitment of all Angola’s political and social forces to ensure the mobilisation of the commitment and resources which exist and which are crucial to the new country that seems to want to come into being. In this context and at the same time as the essential and definitive end to Unita’s military activity and its total demilitarisation, it is also important to guarantee and provide incentives for its full integration into the normal political life of Angola as an unarmed political party.
Still crucial, furthermore, is the active and positive contribution of the international community, including the European Union, specifically in terms of providing urgent humanitarian aid for the Angolan people and, more generally, in terms of the country’s reconstruction. Where the European Union is concerned, and given the state of weakness and destruction that country is in and the enormous amount of work on reconstruction and rehabilitation that must be undertaken, as well as the importance of this country in the regional framework, special attention and support are clearly justified as is even, perhaps, the adoption of a specific aid programme for the consolidation of peace and for the reconstruction of Angola.
The way in which the situation is developing is encouraging. The measures and instruments already adopted appear to be a step in the right direction. The very prospect of holding elections, which have already been announced, indicates the desire to continue along the path of political normalisation, even if the path is pitted with difficulties and with hard choices to be made. This is a time for optimism and all our action must be determined by unlimited support for turning the hope that the Angolans have today into reality."@en1
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