Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-06-18-Speech-3-313"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20080618.25.3-313"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:translated text |
"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, as Mr Wojciechowski, the previous speaker, has already said, relations with Russia are extremely delicate and fraught with ambiguity. I understand the attitude of our fellow Members from Central and Eastern Europe and the Baltic states in particular, who have suffered a great deal from Russian domination in the form of Soviet control and a harsh and oppressive system, which has now happily faded away. I believe that we have to seize this opportunity to establish more friendly relations with the great Russian people who are unquestionably Europeans and in some way are also the gatekeepers of Europe. Russia is confronted with the same problems as us: it is faced with a falling birth rate while at the same time the vast open spaces of Siberia could well prove to be an attractive proposition to the one and a half billion Chinese who believe that part of their territory was taken from them.
I think that the misunderstandings that may exist and persist with Russia, and which it is hoped will be cleared up at the EU-Russia Summit on 14 November, are also partly our responsibility. We hitched our cart to the American political wagon and returned to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation – I am speaking for France here – which was a response to the Warsaw Pact. Once the Warsaw Pact disappeared I believe that Russia quite legitimately developed suspicions about our intentions and I would like to see these misunderstandings straightened out on both sides."@en1
|
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples