Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-05-14-Speech-3-012"
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"en.20030514.1.3-012"2
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"Mr President, there is nothing more unpleasant for a politician than to be right but not to win the argument. What is even worse is to be wrong and to see ever more clearly how wrong you were. Very specifically, we all know that the so-called existence of large quantities of weapons of mass destruction was the main official reason for starting this war. We all recall the presentations by Tony Blair and Colin Powell in the United Nations, where they produced hard evidence of the existence of these weapons of mass destruction. Now, after weeks of searching by hundreds of American and British soldiers, it seems this evidence does not exist.
Might this perhaps be the reason why the authorities, for which read the Americans and the British, are refusing to let Hans Blix and his UN inspection team in? The UN weapons inspectors are the only ones who can demonstrate that Iraq is free of weapons of mass destruction, but they are also the only ones who will very probably demonstrate that Bush and Blair were wrong when they started this war because there were supposed to be weapons of mass destruction.
This refusal is part of a much broader pattern, one of keeping the United Nations at arm’s length. It is not right and nor is it smart. Let me give two examples of where the role of the United Nations is crucial. UNEP, the United Nations environmental organisation, has, rightly in my view, pressed for an investigation as soon as possible into the environmental effects, the environmental consequences of the use of cluster bombs and depleted uranium for example. The establishment of a tribunal, sorely needed for processing the criminal past, is only possible with the help of the United Nations. But let us also be clear: the European Union itself can only function at full power whether we are talking of humanitarian aid or of reconstruction within a framework that has been legitimised by the United Nations and as an equal partner of the US and not as a subcontractor.
My fear is that Europe, without that UN mandate, will nonetheless, half-heartedly and probably even grudgingly, assist with the reconstruction of Iraq. The EU from a sense of duty, some Member States because they have no wish for a second conflict with the United States and because they want their share. That is not the Common Foreign Policy that my group has in mind. The road to a European Union common foreign policy runs via New York, via the United Nations. Only with a UN mandate will the EU be able to put its – not insignificant – capabilities to use in building up Iraq and returning the government to the Iraqi people. That is also in the interest of the United States and the United Kingdom.
I should therefore like to call on the British, the Spanish, but also the Polish governments and our colleagues in the government parties in those countries to break with the logic of war according to which the winner takes all. The winner does not take all; it must not want to, nor must it be able to. Look at what is happening in Iraq at the moment. It is a chaos in which one military governor succeeds another because the Americans and the British do not really know exactly what to do. Iraq has no need of triumphalist victors who do not know what to do. The war has been won by the few, but the peace can only be won by the many."@en1
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