Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-03-26-Speech-3-071"
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"en.20030326.5.3-071"2
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"Mr President, Thomas Friedmann, an American, gave it as his opinion that ‘this war is not a war of necessity, but one that is clearly deliberate’. In ‘Le Monde’, Alain Pellet took the view that ‘aggression is still aggression, even if it is on the part of a great democratic empire and directed against a bloody tyranny’. This is especially the case when such aggression begins at the very point when the Security Council and the inspectors are succeeding in keeping Saddam Hussein's regime in check and are beginning to disarm it. I am particularly struck by the fact that a section of Europe's governments is the cause of many deaths and injuries, and, indeed, of massive destruction in an already poverty-stricken country, or at least regards such things as acceptable, for private wars such as this can also be uncommonly contagious.
I am reassured, though, by the fact that Europe's people condemn this war and have no wish to dance blindly and uncritically to the US administration's tune. Europe's citizens give us cause for hope, and their love of peace should be the foundation on which we construct a common foreign and security policy. The USA's status as a military hyperpower means, however, that it will not work without a military component. We simply have to be prepared to consult among ourselves on where we should concentrate our military expenditure.
The next test of our mettle, though, is almost upon us. With firms close to the US administration – such as a subsidiary of Halliburton – being awarded government contracts worth billions, and, according to newspaper reports, British firms also queuing up in America to get their slice of the cake, Europe is organising humanitarian aid, but it must not stop at that. We have to use a Security Council mandate as a means of gaining for ourselves a substantial role in the reconstruction of Iraq, of an Iraq in which all – Sunni, Shia, and Kurd – can live in freedom and peace, free from dictatorship whether at home or abroad. Taking it for granted as I do that nobody will have anything like the decisiveness required to implement the UN's resolutions on Palestine and Israel, it will again be Europe that has to take action for a just solution in the Middle East.
I nevertheless hope that Great Britain and a number of other supporters of this American war will spare a thought for Europe and slowly come to realise that, in the coalition of the willing, the only will that counts is that of the USA. I do not believe that Europe exists to pick up the pieces left behind by others; on the contrary, we need our own identity and our own common foreign and security policy!"@en1
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