Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-09-03-Speech-3-130"
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"en.20030903.6.3-130"2
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".
Mr President, I would like to begin by following Mr Frattini's eloquent remarks in paying tribute to the bravery and dedication of Sergio Vieira de Mello and his staff. I am sure the whole of Parliament feels the same sentiments.
It requires international commitment through the United Nations and its associated bodies. If we want to see the maximum international involvement, then we have to take account of how most countries think that involvement can be most effectively legitimised and made to work. And it requires – as the International Crisis Group recently pointed out in a characteristically thoughtful and well informed analysis – early and substantial involvement by Iraqis themselves.
So what has the Commission been doing to help this process? Our first priority was to provide humanitarian assistance. In this regard I would like to pay tribute to the work of ECHO, which has maintained its activities in Iraq before and during the entire crisis, undeterred by the military conflict and by recent attacks on humanitarian personnel. This Parliament should be proud of the work that ECHO does, both professionally and bravely.
Alongside this important contribution, the Commission has been preparing its proposals for a European approach to reconstruction in Iraq, as requested by the European Council in Thessaloniki. We are prepared to help, if and when security conditions allow, provided that there is an adequate multilateral umbrella for our contribution, one that is separate from, though coordinated with, the work of the Coalition Provisional Authority. This is a message which I have personally made clear in meetings over the summer with US Secretary of State Colin Powell and Under-Secretary Alan Larson.
I have been wholly consistent on this point, and I do not believe it has been either inappropriately controversial or unreasonable to be so. Let me give one example of political reality. I do not believe this Parliament would support any other approach. Maybe I am wrong. Maybe my political judgment is way off the mark. But I do not think that it would be.
I am grateful for the endorsement of my colleague!
Over the summer, Commission officials have been participating in the international needs assessment missions as part of World Bank and UN teams and I would like to publicly thank them here for their willingness to do this in difficult security conditions. Two of our staff missed being victims of the 19 August attack by a matter of minutes.
Alongside this crucial needs assessment work, the Commission and presidency have been participating in weekly teleconferences of a core group, together with the United States, Japan, the United Arab Emirates, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the UNDP. There is a face-to-face meeting of this core group in Brussels today to prepare a Donors’ Conference for the period before the end of 2004. It will take place in Madrid on 23-24 October 2003, and Spain has joined the group as host. I very much welcome that, and have assured the Spanish Government that the Commission will do everything possible to make the conference a success.
All members of the core group have agreed that we must not allow our timetable to be delayed by violence on the ground. But I cannot pretend that attacks of the kind we are now seeing will not inevitably have some effect on international reconstruction efforts. In Madrid, we will be faced with discussions on what specific contributions we and others will make to the reconstruction of Iraq at a time of uncertainty about what can be implemented on the ground.
It is with this perspective in mind that I have made some initial contacts with the Chairs of the relevant committees to look at the budgetary implications for 2003-2004, and I had a useful meeting yesterday with the budgetary rapporteurs of the relevant committees. I am sure that the House will recognise that in these difficult circumstances we have not yet begun discussing detailed figures but, whatever the final conclusion of the estimates, we know the needs are great.
As it happens, I knew Sergio well, first when I worked with him for five years when he was at the UNHCR, helping to deal with the problem of illegal Vietnamese migrants in Hong Kong. After that when he was Special Representative in Kosovo, and more recently during his extremely successful tenure as the UN Representative in East Timor. He was an outstanding international civil servant – a man of integrity, dedication and wisdom and he was a wonderful and gallant example of the fact that international bureaucrats do not have to be boring. There was a wonderful
about him which made him an extremely attractive interlocutor or companion. So we pay tribute to him in the warmest terms.
As ever, we have to work within the existing financial framework. That is the iron law that I have had to learn, whatever my occasional political reservations. And we must still be in a position to respond to the hopes and needs of other parts of the world, for example Afghanistan and Palestine, where the needs do not get any less. When we make our proposal, you, as the budgetary authority, will have to decide whether we have the right balance.
I very much hope that we have all learned lessons – if expensive and rather painful lessons – over Iraq. For Europe, I hope we can all now recognise that the European Union is incomparably more effective when we work together, especially on the biggest issues in contemporary politics. If we can do that now, in Baghdad and Basra and beyond, then perhaps we can help to ensure that the removal – and we are all agreed that this is at least a benign outcome – of a wicked dictator leads to a better life for the people of Iraq.
As Mr Frattini said, the bombing on 19 August 2003 was, in a sense, an appalling attack on all of us who see international cooperation backed by the authority of the United Nations as the best way of resolving the most intractable of the world’s problems. Like the minister, I am pleased that the Security Council has now decided that attacks on the United Nations and on humanitarian organisations will be treated as war crimes. What has happened in Iraq further supports the powerful arguments for an International Criminal Court.
I was looking forward to working with Sergio and his team in Iraq. It is fair to say that in just two months his impact on the transition process was clearly visible. A number of tributes were paid to him. The tribute paid to him by Richard Holbrooke, the former US Ambassador to the United Nations – and in particular Ambassador Holbrooke’s reminder of how valuable Mr Vieira de Mello’s work was to every country in the world, including the world’s only superpower – was wholly deserved.
It is precisely the vital importance of the UN’s work that explains the purpose of those responsible for the appalling attack on its headquarters in Baghdad. The murderers want this transition and the building of Iraq’s democracy to fail through a strategy of creating chaos. Last Friday’s horrific bombing of the mosque in Najaf, using the same store of explosives and with equally tragic results, is further proof of the aims and methods of the men of violence.
So I hope that our debate can send them a clear message today. Whatever our past disagreements – and important as they were, there is limited point today in focusing on them – we all have a stake in the emergence of a prosperous, stable and democratic Iraq. We should all be committed to trying to make that happen.
I have no intention today of going back over old ground and old arguments, though I appreciate that some of those who raised doubts and criticisms in this Parliament and in the political institutions of the country I know best will not feel – to put it mildly – that events have proved them wrong. The question before us is not whether we should be involved in the reconstruction of Iraq, but how we should be involved and what is required for it to be a success.
It requires security, as we know from previous examples of nation-building. In passing, I would add that we have not come close to cracking the problem in Afghanistan, another country where regime change has proved rather more straightforward than building a pluralist nation.
Success also requires recognition that the non-military commitments to security and nation-building must be as great as or, in the long term, greater than the military ones. It requires a sustained political and financial commitment to cover the gap between rhetoric and reality. You cannot build a modern, democratic, open society on the cheap."@en1
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