Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-04-05-Speech-3-191"

PredicateValue (sorted: default)
rdf:type
dcterms:Date
dcterms:Is Part Of
dcterms:Language
lpv:document identification number
"en.20060405.18.3-191"2
lpv:hasSubsequent
lpv:speaker
lpv:spokenAs
lpv:translated text
"Mr President, I too would like to extend a warm welcome to Mr Milinkevich. It is not only a great honour to have him here in our midst, but also very important that he should be here, for this is not only a moment of fear and threat, but also a unique moment of hope. Mr Milinkevich spoke wise words on the 19th: the people of Belarus have lost their fear, and President Lukashenko is right to be fearful, for even the most armed dictator cannot stand up to the heroic courage of a people that will no longer be gagged. We in Europe should now send the right signals. That means that we must give priority to restricting the visa regime and freezing assets, and that we must also look into a different direction. We must offer opportunities to students and to those people who cannot remain in Belarus. We must ensure that they can study over here and be prepared here for a new and democratic Belarus. Could I also ask you to consider a sanction in the area of arms exports that will hit the Belarusian President where it hurts? The President extracts much of his funds from the arms export. One to two billion annually, and a good deal of those funds serve to line the pockets of the President and his cronies. In terms of arms exports, it may be a good idea to persuade Europe and its allies to take tough sanctions, also with a view to preventing the President’s funds from growing any further, while this will not affect the people. There is little we can do to prevent the arms exports from Belarus. As chairman of this House’s delegation for relations with Russia, I should like to make one last observation. Every country is entitled to favour certain candidates or certain governments. That is also true of Russia, but what is unacceptable is that a member of the OSCE should simply ignore the conclusions of OSCE observers. The OSCE has stated that the elections are neither free nor fair, and Russia cannot respond by saying that they are fair and by simply congratulating President Lukashenko. It is therefore important that this should be added to the agenda of our meeting with Russia and also to that of the G8 summit. It is all well and good that President Putin should urge President Lukashenko to prevent violence, but it is not enough, not by a long shot. If Russia wishes to present itself as being a democratic country, then it must fall in with the community of values of Europe and uphold democracy and human rights."@en1
lpv:unclassifiedMetadata

Named graphs describing this resource:

1http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/rdf/English.ttl.gz
2http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/rdf/Events_and_structure.ttl.gz
3http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/rdf/spokenAs.ttl.gz

The resource appears as object in 2 triples

Context graph