Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-05-11-Speech-3-051"
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"en.20050511.4.3-051"2
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".
Mr President, I would first of all like to correct a mistake that I made with regard to the date of the elections in Kyrgyzstan. Mr Maat has said that these elections are scheduled for 10 July. This information was provided on 6 May; please therefore accept my apologies for this error.
I would also like to thank the honourable Members who spoke for all the analyses they put forward, which were very useful and completely appropriate to the importance of the region. The geopolitical and geostrategic importance of this region for the European Union has been clearly expressed; this means that the European Union must have a greater presence in the region. We all have an interest in seeing greater stability in this region, which first of all means that the aspirations of these countries to consolidate their fairly recent independence must be supported. I think that, in this context, the European Union can play an important part in maintaining the necessary balance between Russia, on the one hand, and the United States, and possibly China, on the other.
As several speakers have stressed, stability is all the more vital because these States are still internally fragile and are consequently particularly prone to the threats of terrorism and fundamentalism. We therefore need to work with these States so that they can evolve into democracies where human rights are respected to a greater extent and where the democratic system becomes stronger. This will only be possible if we help these States to promote economic growth. These countries are very diverse; the economic situation in a country like Kyrgyzstan is very different from that in a country like Kazakhstan, which could potentially be one of the richer States. In this regard, too, the European Union can play an extremely important role. We have had cooperation agreements with these countries since the 1990s and, within the framework of those cooperation agreements, we regularly hold meetings both with regard to the cooperation that we are in the process of building and with regard to a form of political dialogue.
The message that also came out in your resolution, which I welcome, is that the European Union has a very important political role. We can play this role in close cooperation, in particular concerning issues to do with human rights and democratic transition, with the OSCE."@en1
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