Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-09-04-Speech-3-061"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20020904.2.3-061"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:translated text |
"Mr President, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, Commissioner, when my group invited the director Jamie Doran to show his film at the European Parliament on 12 June, we had three objectives in mind. The first aim was to gain as much recognition as possible for the overwhelming validity of the war crimes allegations made by the people interviewed by the British journalist in Afghanistan. Next, we wanted to give as much backing as possible to the idea of sending, under the auspices of the United Nations, a committee of enquiry to the region in question, with a view to establishing the truth of events. This would enable us to stop, hunt down and bring to justice the possible perpetrators of these atrocities, whoever they may be. Finally, we wanted to use this opportunity to reaffirm the need to respect the law and international conventions, in any situation, and this also applies to the fight against terrorism.
The joint resolution which will be submitted to us tomorrow explicitly fulfils these three desires and this is an exceptionally encouraging outcome, even though, to achieve it, it will have taken a leading US magazine to confirm our statements and, in addition, the State department, the UN and, if not the Council, then a number of European leaders to speak more openly. We must now bring this episode to a conclusion and, furthermore, my group believes that we must learn some strategic lessons from it for the future.
Personally speaking, I have no doubt whatsoever regarding the need for a consistent fight against terrorism, and I have never had one ounce of sympathy for the Taliban regime. It must be pointed out, however, that the military operations carried out by the United States or the West in Afghanistan, like the random detention of alleged Islamic extremists in Guantanamo or the compilation of ever-expanding lists of suspect organisations, have not enabled us to stamp out the al-Qa’ida criminal network. To some extent, this observation is based on the report that the anti-terrorist monitoring group formed by the UN sent to the Security Council today. On the other hand, the actions mentioned above have brought about inhuman and often traumatic consequences for the population, have without a doubt reinforced the most radical and extremist elements and, lastly, have increased insecurity throughout the world. That is why my group deeply disagrees with the passages of the resolution which seek to justify war as part of the fight against terrorism. If these paragraphs were to be adopted, many of use would unfortunately be unable to support this text.
We must bear in mind that the subject of war has once again become a major concern in most of our countries. Unlike the sorcerers’ apprentices who, not so long ago, supported Islamic extremist networks in their attempts to destabilise whoever their enemy happened to be at any particular time, we are calling for responsible, on-going management of security issues; I am thinking, in particular, of the need to improve civilian conflict prevention and, if necessary, civil crisis management. The fact that al-Qa’ida cells still exist in at least 40 countries, according to the UN report that I mentioned earlier, also reminds us that terrorist networks are drawing their resources from the troubled waters of the international financial market. When will we finally adopt drastic measures to clean up and lend greater transparency to the international financial circuits where speculative – let us call it traditional – capital now mixes, if not crosses paths, with dirty money from organised crime? This is one of the costs of a genuinely effective fight against terrorism. For the time being, Mr President, it is clearly vital, as many of my fellow Members have said, that the international aid promised to Afghanistan at the Tokyo Conference be provided immediately so that the deeply scarred population – these people and, especially, these women – can, at last, begin to live once again like human beings."@en1
|
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples