Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-11-16-Speech-3-323"
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"en.20051116.21.3-323"2
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"Mr President, firstly I welcome the report on the code of conduct and arms sales and draw to the House’s attention the fact that many of the demands we made in our previous annual debates on this subject have been realised: in particular the new trade regulation on torture equipment, the common position on brokering, and the new obligation to stop exports if there is a risk to international humanitarian law. Most of all I welcome this year’s commitment to make the code legally binding.
Could the Commissioner comment tonight on the fact that practice sometimes falls short? Why is it that Austria, Luxembourg and Greece, for example, do not produce their annual reports? This year information has been published that shows that France has exported bombs and grenades to Burma and Sudan, and Italy has exported firearms to China and to Colombia? Will she comment on the position of our arms exports to Colombia, a country where there is now ample evidence of human rights abuse by the Colombian military?
Many speakers tonight and some of the amendments have referred to the UK position. I am proud that my own country, in its previous Presidency, oversaw the agreement of the EU code of conduct on arms sales and in this Presidency has overseen agreement by the European Union, for the first time, to support an international arms trade treaty. We take seriously our obligations as a nuclear weapons power. The UK Government has reduced the stockpile of nuclear warheads by more than 70%, has reduced the number of warheads on each Trident submarine, from 94 to 48, and has dismantled all of the WE-177 nuclear bombs.
At the Non-Proliferation Treaty conference on 5 May the British Government spokesman said: ‘we recognise that we have particular obligations as a nuclear weapons state under Article 6 of the Treaty. We reaffirm our unequivocal undertaking to accomplish the total elimination of nuclear arsenals, leading to nuclear disarmament’.
Like everyone else here tonight, I share the concerns about the failure to come to a strong consensus as an outcome of the NPT conference earlier this year. But I believe it is wrong to for us to focus on individual countries, whether it be the UK or France. We should ensure that all nations undertake their obligations under that Treaty.
We should welcome the fact that there was an EU-agreed common position in advance of the NPT review conference and take up the mantle of issues, where we, as the EU, should take a lead, such as withdrawal from the Treaty, the universalisation of rigorous safeguard standards through the IAEA additional protocol, and also the question of the transfer of enrichment and reprocessing technologies."@en1
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