Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-05-15-Speech-3-152"
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"en.20020515.7.3-152"2
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".
Mr President, I will try to respond to those Members who have asked questions and who are in the Chamber as well as those Members who have asked questions but, since they have greater interests elsewhere, have had to leave it.
It has been said that the Palestinian State must be recognised as soon as possible. I agree, but it must not be before the Palestinians want it to happen. If you came with me to ask Mr Arafat, at this moment, if he would like, this very afternoon, the Palestinian State to be declared, he would certainly reply: "do not be in such a hurry and wait a bit". This is not the moment therefore and we should do things in accordance with the rhythm that the Palestinians themselves want.
The Palestinians know that if the Palestinian State were established today, they would not be in a position to operate as effectively as we would like and therefore we must give them the opportunity to prepare themselves adequately and to have the guarantee that the Palestinian State is a State that functions, that is viable and that defends the values which we all, and above all they all, or the majority of them, wish to be respected.
With regard to terrorism, I believe that we must continue to say over and over again that it is not possible to achieve peace while there are suicide bombers who do not only kill themselves but who also kill others. We must state and recognise this, both in this House and in any other.
The other day I said to President Arafat that he needs ‘the best’ – his young people – in order to build a future, and the future will not be built if ‘the best’ are killing and being killed. The best he can do is to convince those young people to support and participate in the construction of a Palestinian State. They will all be necessary. And that teacher of mathematics or that teacher of literature who are killing or being killed would have been essential in order to teach literature in the university when the Palestinian State is functioning or to be a good mathematician. That is what the leaders of Palestine must say clearly to their citizens: you are all necessary! We need all of you in order to build a great country.
Mr Cohn-Bendit suggested that we allow a year for the creation of a Palestinian State and for the United Nations to declare its existence. I do not want to argue about that timescale: I do not know whether one year is better than nine months or twenty-two months. That is a decision which does not fall to us, but to the Palestinians, but it is true that the sooner it is and the sooner they are ready the better. A resolution by the Security Council of the United Nations would be the most logical and appropriate way to recognise the existence of a State.
Mr Poos said some very sensible things and I completely agree with many of them, I would differ slightly in relation to certain others but in general I believe that we are on the same wavelength in terms of the solutions we are proposing.
I would like to say to my good friend, Jacques Poos, that I believe some people here may have been sitting back and doing nothing. The honourable Members are well aware that this speaker has never sat back and done nothing, neither when he was a Minister representing his country – when I was a colleague of yours and we had many opportunities to speak; we must therefore be respectful in the words we use. If you believe that I have been sitting back in relation to this conflict, I think you are wrong and, if you will allow me, I could look back and recall moments when the European Council has been sitting back.
As for Mr Emilio Menéndez del Valle, once again I respect what he says and I appreciate the passion with which he has defended the peace process for a long time, but I believe that we must not be naive – which he is not, but many other are, in general: I believe that the Likud Party will continue to say what it has always said and we cannot expect it to change its position at the moment. We cannot expect the Likud Party to applaud the immediate creation of a Palestinian State. It is not going to do so. However, it is very possible that, very shortly, that party’s position may not be the same as the one expressed by the Council the other day, as our experience over many years suggests.
Mr Menéndez del Valle, who knows the issue well, is well aware of the mark made by Mr Netanyahu when he was Prime Minister, which the previous President of the Government was unable to do. We have therefore seen many changes of position – I will not mention opportunism – over the years and, in the Middle East, we have yet to see many more. The important thing is that the ones we see should lead to a peaceful and just future.
I sincerely believe that the European Union is fulfilling its obligations. We cannot solve the problem on our own, but nobody can solve it without us and that is where our strength, and the road we must take, lies.
I agree completely with what Mr Galeote has said and I believe it is absolutely essential to take advantage of a window of opportunity which is not large but rather small. I believe that all the comments by Parliament’s very worthy representatives have indicated this in one way or another.
There are some reasons to be hopeful, but there are still huge reasons to feel frustrated and hopeless. What we have to do is to take advantage of this moment, this window of opportunity – and I believe that is what the international community is trying to do – to make progress. Circumstances like the current ones, which have been pointed out by Mr Patten, many Members, and myself are not going to come about again. Let us therefore get to work. That is what we are trying to do.
We must do everything we can to prevent the peace process being hijacked. We have spent too much time living with the consequences of the great political error of the famous seven days of total peace. That decision of the seven days of total peace, with no doubt whatsoever, delayed the process and prevented decision making. I believe that we should now do everything possible to prevent conduct which could stop us from making a rapid, and parallel, start on work in three directions: security, the new composition of the Palestinian Authority and the new legitimisation of the Palestinian Authority and of the peace process. These three elements – in my judgement – should move forward in parallel and neither one of them should hijack another.
The third issue I wanted to mention – as I have said many times and I repeat today, since I am convinced of it, though I could be mistaken, but I know that even in the European Parliament people can make mistakes – is that I believe we have had a lot of experience of peace processes since the Madrid Conference, including the Oslo Conference until the present time; however, what we have not had, unfortunately, is actual peace.
I believe the time has come for a short process and a long peace. We have had long peace processes but no peace. The time has come for a short and quick process which brings us as quickly as possible to peace and, from then on, to rebuild the Middle East, a process in which the offers made by the countries of the region can be measured in real terms. What we are offering today are commitments which, for the first time, are of a contractual nature.
I would like to say one thing which has not been said and which I would like to repeat. President Arafat said something yesterday on television which he had never said or which, at least, I had never heard: he spoke of the State of Israel as a Jewish State. I believe that President Arafat had never spoken in these terms before. That short phrase of three words contains a very large part of the solution to one of the most difficult problems: the problem of the refugees.
We must therefore carefully weigh up every word uttered by anybody, and not only one person, because sometimes we find, in certain phrases which we do not analyse in depth, thoughts which may have significant consequences for the solution of the problem and there is no doubt that the problem of the refugees will continue to be a fundamental problem in terms of a solution.
If you ask me what the most realistic agenda for the Conference should be, I would reply in all honesty that at the moment I do not know. I believe that the agenda must be based on basic principles, that is, peace for territories, the Security Council resolutions and that, as I said before, it should include an essential element which is new: the Beirut Initiative, which does not only also offer a framework for the traditional Madrid lines of negotiation, but also introduces a regional aspect which could be of fundamental use in terms of resolving the problem."@en1
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