Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/1999-10-27-Speech-3-187"
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"en.19991027.6.3-187"2
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"Mr President, I was interested to hear during the course of this short but important debate, the views of the honourable Member, Mr MacCormick. He and I have known one another for 35 years which may surprise honourable Members because we both look much younger than that. But I think that I can honestly say that our respective views on nuclear weapons have not changed in three and a half decades which is an argument, I guess, for consistency through life.
One rather more serious point. I think that most speakers have made the extremely important distinction between the United States and the United States Administration, on the one hand, and the United States Senate, and in particular its Republican majority, on the other, a point made by Mr Baron, Mr Haarder, Mr Elles and by other speakers. It is important for us to make that distinction and to recognise that it is the Senate and the Members of Congress as a whole on whom we need to put some pressure. One thing we have to argue with them, and it was reflected in the article from which the honourable Member, Mr Elles, quoted, is that unilateralism today as advocated by some Republicans, but not all Republicans to be fair to Senator Logan, is a policy, to borrow from Irish history of “ourselves alone” that would be as disastrous for the world as it was after the First World War.
I think, we have a lot of persuading to do. The honourable and gallant Member, General Morillon, mentioned the vote in the Senate and that it had been lost by 51 to 48. Actually, it is more serious than that because it requires a two-thirds vote in the Senate to ratify a treaty, so we are still almost 20 votes short of that ratification figure. In any event, I can assure Parliament that the Commission will want to join honourable Members in trying to persuade Senators to think again. It is in our interest, it is in their interest and it is in the whole world’s interest."@en1
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