Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-10-11-Speech-3-049"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20061011.13.3-049"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:translated text |
".
Mr President, North Korea’s nuclear test is, quite clearly, deserving of condemnation, for it makes the region even less stable and, like every other of its kind, exposes the people who live there to the risk of radioactive fall-out. It is particularly cynical of North Korea to invest money in nuclear testing that the government could instead have used to feed the country’s people better, and it is good that the EU wants to carry on providing aid to this end.
The Russian Defence Minister has said that this nuclear test makes North Korea, the
ninth nuclear power, joining the USA, Russia, China, France, the United Kingdom, Israel, India and Pakistan. The situation must now be prevented from escalating further. Those now talking of the need for military strikes are dangerous warmongers. On the contrary, it is negotiations that will provide the solution we need, and the EU could certainly play a part in them, as indeed Mr Solana and Commissioner Ferrero-Waldner have already indicated.
One of the North Korean government’s core demands would appear to be that it should be allowed to negotiate directly with the USA. Why, then, should it not be possible for the USA to conduct bilateral negotiations with North Korea directly? That is what the US administration must do, even if it seemingly involves a superhuman effort. Calling for sanctions will only make the situation worse; those who are doing that right now must explain how they propose to prevent the sanctions hitting only the North Korean people, who are starving already. The experience of imposing sanctions on India and Pakistan in the days when they were fledgling nuclear states shows that sanctions very rapidly run out of steam. The Nuclear Weapons Non-Proliferation Treaty was always inconsistent, but is now in serious danger; in its sixth article, the parties to it undertook – and I quote – ‘to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control’, which amounts to a requirement that all nuclear weapons be disposed of.
Europeans, too, have their own obligations where nuclear weapons are concerned. I would remind Mr Solana that the nuclear weapons within the European Union are not held legally, contrary to what your colleague Annalisa Giannella tried to tell those of us who sit on the Committee on Foreign Affairs. On the contrary, the EU’s Member States have committed themselves, on the basis of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, to nuclear disarmament, and this is where we come up against the problem of the double standards that are so characteristic of Western and EU policy. I ask you: what nuclear power do you know of that abides by Article 6 of the Nuclear Weapons Non-Proliferation Treaty, in which nuclear disarmament is laid down as an obligation?
I can tell you that the EU Member States are doing the precise opposite, in that the United Kingdom and France are not merely failing to dispose of their nuclear weapons but are also developing new and powerful ones. Nuclear weapons are always criminal in nature, and the testing of them always produces misleading and dangerous results; what is interesting is the differing treatment meted out to North Korea and Iran. Let me spell it out: threats of military attack always have the opposite effect to that intended. There are no such things as good nuclear weapons; they must be got rid of everywhere, and all nuclear tests are worthy of condemnation and must be stopped."@en1
|
| lpv:unclassifiedMetadata |
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples