Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-09-15-Speech-3-011"
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"en.20040915.1.3-011"2
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"Yesterday, Mr President, the President of this House expressed on behalf of all of us our profound indignation at the monstrous hostage-taking in Beslan.
Having radically and unanimously condemned terrorism, it is now for us to speak out equally clearly on the roots of these appalling outbreaks of violence, on the results of the much-vaunted war on terrorism, which was launched in order to curb them, and on the EU’s responsibilities in this crucial context.
These questions, however, arise in a very similar way in respect of the Caucasus, Iraq and the Middle East. Mr Bush, Mr Putin and Mr Sharon are taking the same strategy further, with the same catastrophic results.
The roots of terrorism, of course, lie in a state of permanent war, with bombings and acts of destruction and humiliation, when these are not acts of barbarism committed by occupying forces. Claiming to wage war on terrorism, one ends up waging war on peoples. Putting them through hell does indeed beget monsters.
The outcome of this alleged war on terrorism is therefore the same in each of the cases to which I have referred. Vladimir Putin gained power by promising to restore order. Five years on, the Caucasus is ablaze and the blood is flowing as far as Moscow. Ariel Sharon promised his people security and peace. Since then, the people of Israel have been living in a climate of fear, division and confrontation, while Gaza, locked in and exhausted, is rapidly becoming another ticking time-bomb. George Bush saw good as overcoming evil and contemplated extending democracy to the whole of the Middle East; now Iraq is sinking into chaos while the list of innocent victims gets longer from day to day.
What, then, is the EU’s responsibility, in terms both of its values and of its own best interests? It is, in the first place, to be there, not as an inaudible entity, but as a recognised interested party; it is responsible, above all, for daring to sound the alarm when the world is falling apart before our eyes. It must not tremble at every frown from his lordship in the Kremlin. The accusation of interference carries no more weight today in the case of Chechnya than it formerly did in relation to Kosovo. It must also do away with the intolerable
immunity granted to the Sharon Government, which is openly defying the UN, the International Court of Justice and international law in general. Finally, it must denounce the unjust, illegal, and increasingly dangerous war in Iraq, formally call for the withdrawal of the occupying troops and, in general terms, adopt as its own for the future the principle that war should be banned as a way of sorting out the world’s problems.
We should reflect on the words of Kofi Annan, who said: ‘History is a harsh judge; it will not forgive us if we let this moment pass’."@en1
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