Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-10-05-Speech-4-189"
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"en.20001005.12.4-189"2
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"Madam President, fellow Members. It is of course difficult, as events unfold in Belgrade, to sit here calmly and give a speech which was prepared before all this came to pass. I expected today’s events to take place last Monday. We all know that the people have stormed Parliament, that the television station, which has been fully occupied by the army, has been stormed and that army vehicles and the police are now out in force in the middle of Belgrade. We can only hope that all the people hiding behind the army and behind the police – all of whom are essentially there to serve the people, not a dictator such as Milosevic – will think twice before turning against the peaceful demonstrators.
Since democracy raised its head again in Serbia last Monday, the possibility of Serbia soon rejoining the European family is now a real possibility. The results of the elections on 24 September have made a democratic change of direction possible. I should like to congratulate everyone who helped to achieve it: the democratic opposition and, most importantly, the people and the leader of the democratic organisation, Mr Kostunica. I think that, in him, we have a man who understands both the Serbs and our concerns and with whom we can discuss a qualified procedure for bringing Serbia closer to Europe.
Since 24 September, Milosevic can no longer claim to be an elected ruler. Everyone, including his own citizens in Serbia now clearly see that he is a dictator, who is using all the brutal, ugly and contemptuous instruments of dictatorship in his own country. Special police units, dirty tricks and deception, quasi-legal procedures which he is using in a bid to hush up the fact that the people are sick and tired of him.
He has managed for years, with the help of his propaganda machine and by exerting brutal pressure on the media, to deceive the people in his own country and, unfortunately, many in the western world, to whom he has misrepresented the real situation. At last, all that is at an end. The people in Serbia have expressed their will in democratic elections and they are painfully aware of the fact that Milosevic has no intention of respecting this will and is thinking only of hanging on to power and maintaining his contemptuous regime. Which is why we must support Serbia in its bid for freedom.
Those who have fought for peace in south-eastern Europe for years now and who are familiar with the situation in the region, know how difficult the fight against authoritarian rulers and tyrants in most of these countries was and, in places, still is. Sometimes we expect too much of the new people in power or we expect them to follow our views and our way of thinking, which do not fit in with their traditions and which are irreconcilable with their philosophy of life or alien to their mindset.
I should therefore like to state quite clearly that we shall soon have new contacts in Serbia, who may well not understand us immediately or who will perhaps misunderstand us, partly due to inexperience and partly due to the cultural or structural differences which I have mentioned. I should like straight away to warn against interpreting any such initial difficulties in communicating with the newly elected president as a sign of irreconcilable differences between us and the advocates of democracy in Serbia. There are no such differences. We can help them on the path to Europe.
If we want to give the implementation of the stability pact a real boost after the imminent change of power in Serbia and push the so-called quick start packages through at long last, then we must do more than just talk. I therefore call on the Commission and the Council to give a sign at long last and at least lift some sanctions, because these sanctions have made 200 000 people in Serbia richer and richer and 10 million people poorer and poorer. Please help us to give the people a glimmer of hope, with Kostunica, so that we can all nurse some hope for Serbia."@en1
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