Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-02-05-Speech-2-128"
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"en.20020205.6.2-128"2
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"High Representative, Commissioner, you have the dubious fortune to live in interesting times, as the Chinese might say. You may be the architects of the Union's awakening in foreign policy. I welcome the meetings that Mr Sharon had last week with Palestinian leaders. I regret that it is the first time since he came to power that he has directly engaged with the Palestinians and I hope it is not mere coincidence that the talks come just before his trip to Washington DC. But it will not be enough to talk about a cease-fire. We need to be talking about an Israeli pullback and an end to the destruction of EUR 17 million worth of EU-funded Palestinian infrastructure.
I recommend, High Representative, that if we want peace we do not define any starting date. Nonetheless, the news that some Israeli reservists are reportedly refusing to serve outside the 1967 frontiers is a welcome development.
After all it was similar pressure from reservists that led to Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon and, taken together with Arafat's expression of willingness of the Palestinians to end the conflict and the need to find creative solutions, these green shoots of optimism need to be nurtured and encouraged to grow.
High Representative, you spoke of the Mitchell report and light at the end of the tunnel. I hope this is not the headlamp of an oncoming train. Sometimes America's friends – or so-called friends – in the Middle East have been about as helpful to the peace process as the so-called loyalists in Northern Ireland have proven loyal to the UK Government. The Union has a serious dilemma if it believes that US policy on the Middle East is damaging the entirety of Western interests. I wish you wisdom and courage in your discussions with our friends on the other side of the Atlantic.
High Representative, you spoke also about Afghanistan. My group is concerned about reports of interfactional fighting in Northern and Eastern Afghanistan, leading to thousands of Pashtuns fleeing villages, reports of 50 or more people being killed in Gardez. Such reports are an ominous sign and strengthen the case for an international stabilisation force to prevent any possibility of a slide to civil war. Our priority would be to complete the elimination of terrorist networks but in this regard we believe that whatever questions there are over the status of combatants held by the US in Afghanistan and in Guantanamo Bay, they should be treated consistently with the 1949 Geneva Convention.
That Convention was the fourth such to establish principles for the treatment of enemy soldiers and civilians in wartime. I hope that you will support my call for a United Nations committee to review it, to determine whether further changes are needed concerning armed insurgents and terrorists who do not fall within the traditional definitions and, if not, at least call on the Americans to sign the 1977 amendments to extend protection to guerrillas and combatants, amendments which the US has refused thus far to sign.
In his state of the union address, President Bush displayed a shocking belligerence. Just as his environmental policies lead to global warming, so his diplomatic and military policies are pushing the world towards a new cold war. In this century every shot the US fires will indeed, in the words of the poet Emerson, "ring round the world" and unless you can appeal to, and nurture, a wider concept of American self-interest, then we risk the menace of a new military millennium."@en1
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