Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-05-15-Speech-4-127"
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"en.20030515.7.4-127"2
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"Mr President, the wars going on in the Congo are tribal wars – ethnic wars – which, in terms of their duration and the devastation they cause, are basically comparable to Europe's religious wars of the seventeenth century, such as the Thirty Years War. The Congo has been called a continent in a continent and the disaster there is indeed taking place on a continental scale. The Ituri region should be one of the most beautiful in the world. If peace were to prevail, it could be a centre of tourism and prosperity. That is why – and I would like to make this very clear – our task is not to point the finger arrogantly at others but to provide help by attempting to deploy our troops in the country as part of a robust peacekeeping mission. We really cannot leave this task to the French, no matter how grateful we should be to them.
At present, we spend a great deal of time arguing over the role of the UN. We are moving towards an odd situation in which major powers want to create legitimacy and the UN, with all its shortcomings, is expected to provide the instruments. It has to be the other way round. The UN must provide legitimacy and the world's major stabilising factors must attempt to supply the instruments. For example, a politically and militarily united Europe, in partnership with the United States, can be a peacebuilding factor there, but a group of troops slung together arbitrarily without a mandate cannot. This is not an isolated or indeed a minor problem. In Africa, survival is the problem, and the Congo is its most acute manifestation. These conflicts are also inflamed, not least, by vested interests in the country's resources. We cannot leave the task to the Congo's neighbours, for in many cases, there are ethnic groups in these countries who also have an interest in fanning the flames of conflict in the Congo. As we have seen, the borders are artificial, with ethnically homogeneous peoples living on both sides of them. If there is to be peace, there has to be a new order, and we must make a robust and substantial contribution to achieving this at last."@en1
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