Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-03-15-Speech-4-139"
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"en.20010315.8.4-139"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I feel that, as Mrs Garaud said, we need to clarify straight away that this is not predominantly a resolution on the statues, it is a resolution on the situation in Afghanistan. As you know, the whole population is being held to ransom by fanatical clerics and the episode with the statues is just the umpteenth example of the fanatical nature of this regime, a regime which lives and thrives within these
these so-called schools which, at the end of the day, only teach one thing: intolerance.
The second thing which I think is important is that we have to dispel the widespread view that nothing much can be done about Afghanistan. I think the contrary is true. I think there are some very specific things which can be done. I can name three.
The first is probably the most important: Commissioner, the European Union, i.e. the Commission, should take an extremely firm stance vis-à-vis Pakistan because, without Pakistan, there would be no Taliban. That is an absolute basic. The Union must therefore make clear that, if Pakistan persists, as it is doing, in helping and supporting the Taliban, there will be no prospect of developing relations between the European Union and Pakistan.
A second possible line of action, for which we can, I think, thank a forerunner in our Parliament, General Morillon, consists of giving firm support to General Massoud over and above any hypocrisy. We cannot keep hiding behind alibis. It is, I think, the only organised resistance against the regime in place and we need to give it teeth.
The third line of action, which will perhaps seem a little more indirect, but which is just as basic, concerns aid given by the United Nations - fairly indirectly but not as indirectly as all that via the UNDCP, the United Nations Drug Control Programme headed by Mr Arlacchi. The UN has given the Taliban substantial aid through programmes which profess to eradicate crops but which, in fact, do no more than shift them a few hundred metres or a few kilometres, to the point that the Taliban have had access both to UN subsidies and to the profit generated by cultivating banned substances. So we need to get the UNDCP with its back against the wall. I think that we also need to campaign to prevent Pino Arlacchi from being re-elected in June. This man needs to go home and study sociology and relieve us of his presence in an organisation of such importance.
The UN and the European Union, which is funding this programme, and the Member States, which fund the UNDCP, should therefore insist that all aid programmes to Afghanistan to eradicate drug crops be abolished. We should also persuade the Russians who have infiltrated Mr Arlacchi’s entourage and who have a certain number of dubious connections to say the least - and I shall not say more - to go home and let us clean up the management of this specialised United Nations programme and, in doing so, stop helping the regime in place."@en1
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