Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-03-29-Speech-4-017"
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".
Mr President, I would like, first of all, to reiterate my solidarity with the captive British sailors and with the Bulgarian nurses. We should bring pressure to bear not only on Iran but also on Libya, in order that all these people may be released.
Mr President, I shall now switch to speaking French so that our colleague, Mr Solana might understand me easily.
We must say yes to nuclear disarmament. Everyone knows that any large country that has nuclear power for civilian purposes will also start wanting it with military aims in mind. The key to nuclear disarmament is the dismantling of civilian nuclear facilities, as, without the latter, the former will not happen. We have seen this in the case of Korea, and we are now seeing it in the cases of, for example, Iran, India and Pakistan.
In many countries the two are linked, and that has not always been appreciated. That, I assure you, that is the problem staring us in the face.
Turning now to Darfur, the European Union must take the initiative. I agree, and our group agrees, with our former colleague Chris Patten, who has written a very good article on the subject, and I agree with those intellectuals who have called on the European Union to take the initiative. The time for talk is over. We need to prevent the daily massacre of hundreds of people by the Sudanese forces. This has to be emphasised. The more time that we spend talking about the situation, the more deaths that occur. That is why I agree with Mr Watson that we must take the initiative at the United Nations. In order to prevent the killings and rapes that take place between the helicopters landing and taking off again, we must at the very least protect the refugee camps and establish a no-fly zone, as we did for the Kurds in Iraq. That is the very least we can and should do for Darfur. At the same time, a solution also needs to be found.
These are the terms in which we must speak to the Chinese, who accept all the massacres out of a desire for oil. Human lives are sold by the litre of oil. That is unacceptable to the European Union.
I turn now to the anti-missile shield. On this issue, too, we must be clear. I do not know if this anti-missile shield is directed against Russia. I do not know whom it is directed against, but, if it is directed against Iran, that is completely ridiculous. Emphatically so. If the Iranians want to attack us today, how will they go about it? The answer is, through suicide bombings. What star wars-style anti-suicide-bombing shield are you going to invent, for heaven’s sake? It will definitely not work. It would cost billions, and to what purpose? None at all. The problem is that, once again, the Americans are unilaterally defining what is necessary for a part of Europe, and therein lies the political problem. Europeans, Poles, Czechs, French and Germans need to understand that, in seeking to bring about a multi-polar world, European political union is the key to, and the only option for achieving, our independence.
This debate is political because, in point of fact, the very existence of the European Union is at issue. I refer you to Article 16 of our Treaties. We need to consult each other on foreign policy in order to prevent unilateralism from being imposed in Europe."@en1
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