Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-10-22-Speech-3-142"
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"en.20031022.6.3-142"2
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".
Mr President, I thank all the Members who have spoken and expressed opinions – some of which I think deserve brief comments – as well as claims with which I frankly cannot agree.
First, as Mr Patten has already said – I had mentioned that the Council’s activities and the Commission’s have always moved along in parallel and in complete understanding – doubts have already been expressed regarding certain moments in the presidential elections in Chechnya, and our Russian friends have also been told quite clearly on a number of occasions that Europe is keeping a close watch on the situation inside Chechnya and on the human rights situation.
At the same time, I think it is quite right – and the Presidency confirms this – to have continued to encourage the constitutional reform approach that President Putin has embarked on and which he confirms and maintains. At no time in my speech, which is, moreover, available for everyone to look at – as in fact I only heard in one speech by a Member – at no time did I ever say anything that could be taken to mean that I considered the whole Chechen people to be terrorists. I said the opposite: I said quite specifically that the Presidency hopes and desires that those increasingly numerous and widespread sections of the Chechen people that have no connection with terrorism should be involved in the constitutional process. I repeat: I do not believe in any way at all that the Chechen people is a terrorist people. Nevertheless, although we shall certainly talk about this point – that is, the involvement of a broad spectrum of Chechen civil society in the constitutional process – at the summit with the Russian Federation, I must also make it just as clear that there can never be any justification of any kind for those individuals – however many of them there may be – who commit terrorist acts or use themselves as human bombs to kill innocent civilians. On this point, we Europeans have always been and, I hope, will continue to be united."@en1
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