Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-01-29-Speech-3-060"
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"en.20030129.2.3-060"2
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"Mr President, the international political climate is stormy, to say the least. To misquote Tolstoy, it is no exaggeration to say that what we face is no more and no less than the dilemma of war or peace. In other words what some people see as the dilemma, that is, should Saddam Hussein stay or go, is beside the point. We are basically in the aftermath of a crisis which started back in 1979 with the Iran-Iraq war, continued with Kuwait, and is still going on today. Former allies are now adversaries and former adversaries are now allies.
And what are we doing about it? As the European Union, we need to act on one principle and one political commitment. The principle being that every decision must be passed by the UN Security Council and the political commitment being that we must all stand united at the UN. Last Monday, the General Affairs Council started by defining the capabilities of the European Union; let us hope that these capabilities finally translate into policy.
We often say, when discussing Euro-American affairs, that the Americans are our allies. Yes, they are and, as such, we supported and helped them in Afghanistan. But every American policy does not automatically have to become European policy. Let me ask you one simple question. Was Clinton’s policy on the Middle East, on Iraq and other countries, the same as Bush’s policy? No. Therefore, the political autonomy of the European Union and the principles which underpin it must always be the cornerstone of mutual respect between America and Europe.
We need to answer a number of questions about crisis management. You remember what we said about the crisis in the Middle East? And nobody listened to us. There is the issue of democracy in the Gulf, in Iraq and elsewhere, but this is not the time to go into that. What I would say, however, is that the democratic changes in central and eastern Europe, where we have found new partners, did not come about by taking sides and engaging in conflicts. They came about by backing off and improving relations and by paving the way for these countries and nations to move towards democracy."@en1
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