Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-12-12-Speech-3-242"
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"en.20011212.7.3-242"2
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". – Mr President, I would like to thank Mr Lagendijk for another excellent report. I would also like to welcome his challenging remarks today about, for example, the civil peace corps which I suspect will continue to be a subject of lively debate. Above all I would like to thank him for what he said about the external aspects of sustainable development. That is a subject on which we should all focus our attention in the run-up to the Johannesburg Conference next year. I hope in particular that Parliament will take a special interest in some of the issues he raised, which are of fundamental importance if we are to be credible on sustainable development.
In November, we also committed money under the CFSP budget to finance the South African Guard Support Unit for the protection of the recently returned political leaders in Burundi. I was pleased to be able to meet them and have a briefing from them. In the region, we continue to carry out rehabilitation, to deliver humanitarian aid and to contribute to poverty alleviation. We stand ready to finance demilitarisation and demobilisation programmes as soon as they get started.
So we are, I hope and believe, raising our game. We were starting to do so before the horrific events of three months ago which the honourable Member referred to. But we know now how much is at stake; we know how preventing conflict abroad is vital to our own security here at home. We know that we cannot slacken our efforts, but rather, as Mr Lagendijk has argued, we need to redouble those efforts. That is the very least we should be doing in response to the atrocities of 11 September.
This is a topical debate. Mr Wiersma suggested it was a Dutch hobby. I am bound to say that, if it is, it is an extremely good Dutch hobby and I recommend it to every one of the Member States. There is a growing appreciation of the need to reinforce our efforts to tackle the factors that make conflict and violence arise in the first place. In the last century, conflict tended to be between states; I do not argue that sort conflict is over and done with. But in today’s world we face a new type of danger – the failed state, the state that is a danger to its own people and a menace to the rest of the world.
Let me be crystal clear. Nothing excuses or mitigates terrorism. But in rooting out terrorism, we have to work to make sure that the world is hostile terrain – not fertile ground – for terrorists and those who back them. That can mean taking tough military action, as we do from time to time. But it also means exporting and entrenching democracy, the rule of law and good government; it means liberalising world trade, and using that and our development assistance to shrink the gap between the richest and the poorest, in a world in which the planet's three richest men own the equivalent of the GDP of the 48 poorest countries.
Earlier this year, the Commission published the communication setting out our new strategy of conflict prevention. It is based on four main objectives. First, we want to make a more systematic and coordinated use of the European Union's instruments to address the root causes of conflict. Simply put, we want to get better leverage from our position as the world’s largest donor and as the top trading bloc. We are starting by integrating conflict prevention into our strategies towards partner countries, taking account of conflict indicators, for example, in our country strategy papers.
The second objective of our communication is to raise the effectiveness of our actions in tackling 'cross-cutting issues' such as trafficking in drugs or arms, the trading of illicit goods, environmental degradation and so on. On all these fronts, the challenge is immense. Let me just take, for example, the issue raised by Mrs Ferrer. The Commission has played, over the last few months, an active role in the Kimberley process, dealing with conflict diamonds. That is aimed at establishing an international control regime for the import and export of rough diamonds. After the political agreement reached at Gaborone, two weeks ago, between the participants in this process, the Commission is now launching the preparatory work for the full implementation by the Community of the control regime in the course of next year.
The third objective is to develop our ability to respond rapidly to emerging crises. Concrete recommendations have been put forward, notably to improve the CFSP instruments, such as political dialogue or the use of special representatives. I can only agree with Mr Lagendijk that 'conflict prevention implies stronger commitment and political direction on the part of the Member States, as the Community instruments alone are not enough to resolve all possible sources of conflict'. What is required is a bit more of that old-fashioned commodity – political will.
At Community level, we have set up, at my initiative, a special rapid reaction mechanism to equip us to respond with the speed that events in the real world demand, but which the Commission’s procedures are not always brilliantly designed to cope with. It is now fully operational, and is proving invaluable in current crises, for example in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and in Afghanistan where I hope to use the mechanism first of all to provide support for Ambassador Brahimi's team, secondly to provide support for the interim administration and, thirdly, to begin the work of demining.
The fourth message is to promote international cooperation with governments, international organisations and civil society. The honourable Member raised this. Mr Sacrédeus raised this as well. The UN is a key partner here. We have a new framework, agreed by the General Affairs Council in June, for EU-UN enhanced cooperation on conflict prevention and crisis management. As recommended by Mr Lagendijk, I am ready to work together with the Council on an enhanced framework for cooperation with the OSCE.
Let me finish by giving you one example of what we have we done and what we are doing concretely in a key zone of conflict. I am just back from the Great Lakes region where we had a useful troika mission. Last month, we committed funds under the rapid reaction mechanism to support the inter-Congolese dialogue, to launch preparatory actions for the reintegration of child soldiers and to support independent media or other confidence-building initiatives."@en1
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