Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-09-15-Speech-3-015"
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"en.20040915.1.3-015"2
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"Mr President, the frightful terrorist attack on a school in Beslan has claimed hundreds of children and their mothers as its victims. What should have been for hundreds of children a day of rejoicing – their first day at school – turned into an appalling tragedy. Yesterday, together with millions of schoolchildren throughout Europe, we kept a minute’s silence to remember the victims, and we thank this House’s President for this gesture of solidarity, which was also an expression of powerlessness, the powerlessness felt by everyone in the face of this cruel attack on those who cannot defend themselves – children and their mothers.
Today, we want, above all, to affirm that we are alongside people in a remote corner of Europe, but the debate on the mounting threat of a terrorism that spares nothing and nobody must still go on, both today and in the months to come. Its keywords must be ‘comprehension’ and ‘action’. We must endeavour to comprehend the incomprehensible. We must be prepared to seek out the causes of terrorism, to open our eyes to people’s hopelessness and frustration and that of the conflicts that appear to be unending, without the prospect of a solution. I am quite clearly not saying that the existence of these conflicts is a justification for barbarous violence directed at innocent people, but rather that we must adopt a joint approach in order to do away with this source from which violence develops. In the same way, we also have to be prepared to act, to take international cooperation in the fight against terrorism further.
It follows that the European Union must offer the Russian people, and President Putin, every assistance in attempting to prevent such far-reaching calamities from happening in future. The question naturally arises of how all of this was possible. It is a good thing that the State Duma is conducting an inquiry into how the calamity in Beslan ended and how that final stage was dealt with. Nor is there any getting away from the Chechen issue. The assistance to which I have just referred does, of course, include joint operations on the ground by the intelligence services, their training in specialized units and their learning from each other’s experiences. International terrorism cannot be tackled without international cooperation, and the European Union has an important part to play in that.
My group has little sympathy for those who think that they can go it alone in combating international terrorism and who also believe that this is the only way to do so. I want to ask the House for an intensive debate, to be held by the end of the year and jointly with the Council and the Commission, on the European contribution to the fight against terrorism. Where do we stand, and what is our analysis of the threat? This morning, Mr Bot made an important contribution to this discussion in his statement on what the European Union and its Presidency are doing. High on the list are seeking out the causes and dealing with them, but our European tradition bids us also look at how democratic structures are to be secured and fundamental human rights protected."@en1
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