Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-03-30-Speech-2-180"
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"en.20040330.5.2-180"2
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"Mr President, the most detailed and in-depth analysis of the limits to the development of democracy in the Arab world and of its consequences on development in those societies came from the first report of the United Nations Development Programme that was drawn up in 2002.
The second report was published recently and goes into more depth as regards the lack of education and training, the severe limits in terms of cultural production, technology and research. The most revealing fact is that the team that is working on this project is made up entirely – and I repeat, entirely – of Arab researchers. The strategy for the Greater Middle East, drawn up by the Bush administration, is based largely on these analyses, with a limitation that I would say is fatal: that of prescribing changes and reforms without establishing any relationship with the Arab and Islamic world.
There is the risk that this approach will fuel the notion that so-called Western civilisation thinks itself superior to all the religious and cultural traditions of the Arab world. This notion lies at the root of the feeling of humiliation that is so widespread in these countries and which terrorist groups exploit, hoping in turn to fuel hatred towards the West.
The second comment that I would like to make concerns relations between the Bush administration and the Sharon government. In the eyes of the Arab world, the principle of double standards is intolerable. Can Sharon’s Israel still be defined as a country under the rule of law despite the extrajudicial executions, collective punishments, the construction of a wall in Palestinian territory, the settlements and the lack of access to fundamental resources such as water for the Palestinian people?
The US administration, so inflexible that it inflicted two wars on Iraq and ten years of embargo, today is not budging an inch on what was once again defined as a humanitarian disaster by the rapporteur of the UN Commission on Human Rights in Geneva yesterday. The concern is that the method chosen by the US administration and its indifference to the Middle East conflict could have the opposite effect, that is to say for it to seem, in the eyes of the public in these countries, that even greater credit is given to non-democratic governments and political classes that are responsible for the unfair use of resources, for widespread corruption, for the lack of democracy and fundamental freedoms
of women for a start – and in short those responsible for the crisis and the decline of these societies.
Europe has a role and a responsibility in all of this, but also a solid history of relations in the Mediterranean area, based on a different method, that of partnership. Recently this strategy was stepped up, as a response to enlargement to the East, with the neighbourhood policy. Today is therefore not about challenging all this, but rather about establishing a relationship with the Bush administration, with the Arab League and in collaboration with the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO), which makes Europe’s point of view heard as an alternative to the initiatives from the US Administration."@en1
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