Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-10-09-Speech-3-112"
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"en.20021009.8.3-112"2
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"Madam President, supporting President Laurent Gbagbo is, ladies and gentlemen, natural. It is natural to support a politician for whom prison, exile and suffering have marked the thirty-year long struggle for his ideas. In two years, he has restored to Côte d’Ivoire a minimum rule of law, revitalised the education system, gained the trust of the international institutions and above all, provided conditions for national reconciliation by forming a government made up of all the opposition parties, and I would point out to Mrs Thors that the RDR
party entered the government in August 2002. Parliament invited President Gbagbo to Strasbourg in November 2001 – Nicole Fontaine invited him – and, in doing so, wanted to acknowledge the work carried out by this humanist professor and leader. We must help him because he symbolises republican legality, because he symbolises political change in an Africa that is greatly in need of it, because he is the symbol that Africa is anchored in a modern democracy. Therefore, ladies and gentlemen, a ceasefire is needed, but on the condition that the rebels surrender their weapons. No constitutionally elected president can negotiate with armed rebels that occupy 40% of his country. The European Union must help in the general reconstruction of the country, which will involve the development of the rule of law, a programme of social housing for the most deprived, and the reorganisation of the Côte d’Ivoire army.
Ladies and gentlemen, if Côte d’Ivoire falters, the whole of West Africa will be permanently destabilised, it will be plunged into chaos, and there will be terrible risks of ethnic and religious clashes. We must therefore, as part of an active diplomatic effort, send a parliamentary mission, and this is what we shall begin working on, Madam President, as of tomorrow. As Commissioner Barnier wished, quite rightly and quite appropriately, this parliamentary mission must be able to arrive within three days in Abidjan and it must strive, on the basis of the resolution that we shall vote upon tomorrow, to play a role and provide Parliament with a role to play. It is no good arriving when the crisis is over. We have an essential responsibility towards this country, its president and the people of Côte d’Ivoire. They need our solidarity, Madam President, in the terrible ordeal they are going through, and the European Parliament must therefore have a presence and its presence must be firm."@en1
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