Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-10-09-Speech-3-051"
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"en.20021009.5.3-051"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, the international community considered that the Iraqi regime, which was responsible for two wars, against Iran and then Kuwait, constituted a permanent potential threat to the security of its neighbours. That is why the Security Council drew up a strategy to cut off Iraq in order to prevent it from equipping itself with weapons of mass destruction, which, up until 1998, was effective.
The question the United States is asking today concerns abandoning this strategy in favour of the far more radical strategy of waging a pre-emptive war against Iraq, before Iraq equips itself with the decisive means for blackmail. What must our position be should this extreme situation arise? First and foremost, it must involve restating that waging a war against Iraq would be the sole decision of the Security Council. The United Nations system is a guarantee of peace, and weakening this system is in nobody’s interests. We must not repeat the serious error that was made against international order in waging war against Yugoslavia without the backing of the Security Council. Unilaterally waging a pre-emptive war against a sovereign State would set an extremely dangerous precedent that could be invoked in future by any country in order to try to solve its problems, for example India or Pakistan with regard to Kashmir.
Secondly, we must state that such a war could only be decided upon should Iraq refuse to implement the resolutions of the Security Council. The mandate given to the inspectors must therefore leave no room for ambiguity, but we must not speculate in advance over the failure of the inspections. That would amount to denying the remarkably efficient work carried out by inspectors from the United Nations and the IAEA between 1991 and 1998 and to renouncing any future disarmament control missions. What is despicable is the inertia of the international community in allowing a black hole of four years to follow the expulsion of inspectors from Iraq, thus enabling Iraq to increase its capability. Naturally, the Security Council, in order to be effective, must not automatically exclude any hypotheses. Automatically excluding the use of force under any circumstances, as suggested, for example, by the German Government, would weaken the position of the international community.
Lastly, we must at all costs prevent inappropriate action in Iraq from making the international fight against Islamic terrorism more difficult, as this is a priority. Waging a pre-emptive war, however, without Iraq having refused to apply the resolutions of the Security Council, could doubly compromise the essential objective of dismantling the Islamic terrorist networks. Such action could in fact, as emphasised yesterday by Philippe de Villiers at the French National Assembly, cause a sudden resurgence of Islamic extremism and the collapse of the international coalition constituted after September 11."@en1
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