Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-09-04-Speech-3-046"
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". – Mr President, I think that it is probably true that I have had the honour, and always the pleasure, of replying to more debates in this Parliament than any other Commissioner in the last three years, such is Parliament's welcome interest in external affairs. For me this has been one of the most interesting and important debates.
My fourth question concerns a point which Dr Kissinger has often reminded us of. Since the Treaty of Westphalia and the end of the Thirty Years War, international law, itself sometimes a rather nebulous concept, has been based on, among other principles, the principle that one state should not intervene in the affairs of another and certainly should not intervene militarily. Is that an entirely adequate principle of international law today? We saw the debate begun a couple of years ago by the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, about whether humanitarian intervention was sometimes justified, for example when a sovereign government could be accused of assaulting the interests and the liberties and the rights of its own people.
Is intervention in the affairs of another sovereign state justified by its possession of weapons of mass destruction? Can you turn that into an acceptable principle? Does it depend entirely on context? Does it depend on the nature of the regime? Does it depend on the stated intentions of the regime? Does it depend on the scale of threat represented by that regime? Whatever else you say, clearly if you are arguing along those lines you will need to present a good deal of evidence.
Finally, on the question of justifying intervention, there is the point which Dr Kissinger argued very explicitly in a recent article in
. He argues that terrorism raises an entirely new issue for nation states. Today, he argues, one nation state can be faced with a threat from another nation state operating through non-state actors. In other words, the argument is that intervention could be justified where a nation state appears to be using terrorist organisations to threaten another nation state. At the very least I imagine all of us would argue that military intervention in a sovereign state demands a clear and well-argued justification.
Those are all issues which will be very near the heart of foreign and security policy debates in the next decade or longer. They are issues on which we in the European Union, not least because of our tradition of the rule of law, not least because of the other principles in which we believe, should have clear and unequivocal opinions.
The final question is: if the present government in Iraq is replaced as a result of military intervention, will that make the politics of the region more moderate or will it make the politics of the region more extreme?
All those are questions which we cannot duck. They are all questions to which we will have to find our own answers over the coming weeks and months.
I would like to finish with this thought. There has been a lot of reference to our relationship with the United States. I very much hope that we can work together with the United States – Europe and the United States – over the coming months to deal with an undoubted threat to world peace and to international stability. We on our side may from time to time sound to Americans as though we are speaking with a rather self-serving condescension in arguing that United States leadership should be based on as broad a moral consensus as possible, referring to the Truman doctrine and the Marshall Plan, which helped to secure our futures, our prosperity, our freedom in Europe.
But we in Europe, if we are to pull on our end of the rope, have to face up to one or two rather difficult issues ourselves. We must avoid wishful thinking and we must avoid ducking the difficult questions which I have addressed during these remarks today. I am sure this will not be the last time we debate this issue. I hope we can clarify our responses to some of those questions in the weeks and months ahead.
It is no business of mine how Parliament conducts its affairs, but if one of the reasons for the interest and informed passion of this debate has been the formula which you have applied on this occasion, that which I think you call 'catching-the-eye', then I, for one, very much welcome it. I think that there are more people in the Chamber than normal. If Parliament does not mind me making the point, in my experience we have had the rather more unusual spectacle of people waiting to hear other people's speeches. I am even delighted to discover that one or two people have come back into the Chamber to hear the winding-up speeches which is a particular and rare pleasure. So speaking for my humble self, in the expectation that I will have rather a lot more debates to reply to in the next couple of years – unless Parliament focuses its interest entirely on domestic affairs – I found this an extremely welcome breakthrough.
I was asked one specific question, and another rhetorical question to which I will return. General Morillon asked the specific question of what we know about the attitude of the people of Iraq to their own regime, what we know about their ambitions and aspirations. The sad truth is that we know damn all because they have not had the opportunity to express their views for all too long. Indeed, the expression of free opinions in Iraq has led to people being shot, tortured and stuck in jail. I look forward to the day when we will know rather more about the aspirations of the people of Iraq but I have my doubts as to whether, in a free election, Saddam Hussein would sweep back with a plurality of the votes.
I should confess to a personal prejudice at this point. I have never regarded enthusiasm as a huge attribute in the discussion of foreign policy. I think enthusiasm does not always go well with the discussion of difficult foreign policy issues and I have always preferred foreign ministers who are prepared to sit under the tree for a bit and think what needs to be done first, rather than those who tear around trying to change the world. I find myself signed up enthusiastically to the famous dictum of Talleyrand
. Reading so many articles over the last summer on Iraq and so many speeches, I have sometimes wished that I believed in the veracity and wisdom of anything I say as fervently as some people seem to believe in the veracity and wisdom of everything they say.
I also think that we have seen a parade of certainties sometimes based on obfuscation. I know very few people, for example, who seriously contend that Saddam Hussein is not in possession of any weapons of mass destruction.
As I said earlier, if he is without any weapons of mass destruction, then what is the problem about letting inspectors in? When we are asked to define weapons of mass destruction, I suspect it is a question which could be put with some benefit to the Kurds in Iraq or to the people who live in the marshes in the south of Iraq, who could explain what chemical weapons do to your lungs. Those would be very good replies. Some of the certainties are also based on evasions and, from time to time, on a lack of willingness to enunciate clear, consistent and defensible principles.
I just want to refer to a number of questions that we need to face up to. They go right to the heart of the issue of compliance with the United Nations and the whole issue of the justification for military action – an issue which was widely debated during the campaign in Kosovo and a question which goes to the heart of the matter we have debated on many occasions in this Chamber – the so-called clash of civilisations.
My first question is what happens if Iraq continues to defy existing UN resolutions? Do we simply shrug our shoulders? Secondly, what happens if we go back to the United Nations Security Council, get a new resolution and Saddam Hussein defies that? What do we do then? Do we simply wring our hands? Thirdly, what happens if we give Saddam Hussein an ultimatum and he defies it? What do we do? Write a letter to
sign a petition? There have been several references – not all of them as laudatory as Mr Alastair Campbell might have liked – to the press conference which the Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland gave in his constituency yesterday. The honourable Member Mr Lagendijk, for example, referred to what he said.
Let me quote one thing which Mr Blair said yesterday: the UN had to be a way of dealing with it – i.e. the problem caused by Iraq – not a way of avoiding dealing with it. While I am not a paid-up member of New Labour, that is a pretty good point and one which we simply cannot duck."@en1
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"'surtout pas trop de zèle'"1
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