Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-04-04-Speech-3-018"
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"en.20010404.2.3-018"2
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"Madam President, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, Mr President of the Commission, ladies and gentlemen, President Prodi has communicated his concern about the situation of the press, of the mass media in Russia. In my view, the President of the Commission is crying over spilt milk. He is lamenting something which is the result of a policy that he himself helped to develop. This European Union policy on Russia is a policy of tolerance, a policy of prostituting our values
Mr President. What is happening now to the mass media has already happened in Central Asia in those ex-Soviet countries in which President Putin is re-establishing a postcolonial policy, a region which the European Union does not see the strategic importance of, just as it does not recognise the strategic importance of the Caucasus region.
I would like to thank Group Chairman, Mr Poettering, who voiced the concerns of the Group of the European People's Party (Christian Democrats) and European Democrats. However, I would urge Mr Poettering to talk to Mr Oostlander, who is the author of a report which, in the main, follows the line taken by the policy proposed by the Commission, a policy entirely focused on the fact that the Union's first priority must be to guarantee supply of Russian gas and oil, with the development and consolidation of the Rule of Law in Russia relegated to second place.
Yesterday, in this very Chamber, Mr President of the Commission, Mr Posselt and I asked Commissioner Nielson for the umpteenth time to produce a policy on Chechnya which is, at the very least, a humanitarian policy, Mr President. For months, or rather for a year and a half now, we have been urging Commissioner Nielson to go to Chechnya. Just to go to Chechnya, nothing more. For his part, Commissioner Nielson has told us repeatedly that the situation there is such as to make a visit impossible. Yesterday, in view of the Commissioner's concern, I asked him to go to Georgia and Azerbaijan to open hospitals at least in these areas, which are not directly under Russian influence, as requested by the Chechen Minister for Health, Mr Umarkambiev, so that, at least, the Chechen people could receive health care instead of having to pay millions of dollars for treatment in a Baku hospital. Commissioner Nielson made no response. Mr President of the Commission, I have run out of patience, and I call upon you formally to remove Commissioner Nielson's mandate for humanitarian aid. Commissioner Nielson is a bureaucrat, Mr President: his travel availability is already booked up for the next four or five years. He pays a quick visit here and there to make sure that the Commission's development cooperation policy is running smoothly, but he has no real time for genuine humanitarian issues. I am not asking you to kick him out of the Commission, just to take this portfolio away from him and appoint someone else who will pay genuine attention to these issues and who will, at last, do something about the question of Chechnya.
What is currently happening in Chechnya is an outrage. There is absolutely no difference between events there and what took place in Bosnia, in Kosovo, incidents at which, after years and years, Parliament and the European Union eventually protested. We must make political investments, Mr President-in-Office. Our humiliating treatment of the members of President Mashkadov's government must stop. It is unthinkable that a minister of the Mashkadov government should have to apply for a visa and do so month after month. It is unthinkable that the European Union should not be able to grant a permanent residence authorisation to those whom you will have to visit in the future and persuade to sit round a negotiating table with the Russians. These are our consultative partners of tomorrow, and all we can do is humiliate them. And all this while the US government welcomes – as it did last week – the Chechen Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Akhmadov. Territorial integrity is not a theory: it is a practical concept in which integrity means that the entire territory is guaranteed, not that anything goes."@en1
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