Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-09-26-Speech-2-086"
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"en.20060926.12.2-086"2
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"Madam President, the European Parliament is delighted to welcome you to its plenary sitting, and it is an honour for me to welcome the first woman to be elected President of an African country, as well as the delegation of Ministers and Members of Parliament accompanying you.
We are therefore receiving you today as a symbol of the rule of law, of peace, of democracy, of women's rights and of the fight against corruption and impunity.
If you read the President of Liberia’s biography, you will see how often she has resigned from her posts because she disagreed with the ways governments were tackling the problem of corruption in her country.
You will also remember that last April, here in plenary, I had the opportunity to express my satisfaction at the arrest and extradition of Charles Taylor, which the European Parliament had called for in various resolutions and which were finally carried out at the request of the President. This represents progress in the fight against impunity for war criminals throughout the world. It is therefore something that we welcome, and I wished to say this today while you are here.
After so much suffering, we want to offer you our support.
It is good that the guns have fallen silent. As soon as the guns fall silent, however, the task begins of reconstructing the country – a task that is of less interest to the television cameras – and the danger is that it may be forgotten now that the battlefield has been abandoned.
This would not be the first time that, having found peace, a society has not found the road to reconciliation and the economy has not found the road to development. In travelling along that road, Madam President, you will find that Europe will be there to help you in order to ensure that Liberia continues to be that symbol of liberty that it was at its birth.
Our hope and desire is that you can build a future of hope for all of the people of your country which will serve as a symbol for the whole of Africa.
You have the floor, Madam President.
I must tell my fellow Members of the European Parliament that the President’s delegation contains more parliamentarians than ministers.
I would like to remind this House that you were also the first woman to become Finance Minister in your country in 1979, 27 years ago now.
Unfortunately, your country suffered a coup d’état in the following year. In 1980 there began a quarter of a century of violence in Liberia, a 14-year civil war, the systematic plundering of the country's resources and a mass violation of the human rights of its inhabitants.
The results of this horrendous and long war – as long as the old religious wars of Europe – could not have been more tragic: 250 000 victims in a country of three million people - almost 10% of the population. A million people had to leave their homes − some of whom are now returning − and there was a mass rape of women − more than 25 000. During that era, three quarters of the population were ‘living’ – if it can be called living – on less than one dollar per day, and up to 85% of the population were unemployed. In other words, there was no economy in the sense that we understand it in the developed Western societies.
Madam President, under those circumstances it cannot be an easy task for any politician to take on the presidency of a country.
Our Parliament is delighted with the role that the Economic Community of Western African States (ECOWAS) played in the peace talks in 2002 that led to the presidential elections that you won last November.
The European Parliament sent observers to those elections, and the head of the delegation, Mr van den Berg, made it clear in his report that, despite a few small incidents, the elections had taken place in accordance with the rules governing them."@en1
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