Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-12-10-Speech-1-185"
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"en.20071210.22.1-185"2
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"Mr President, I am delighted to see Commissioner Kuneva here this evening. I have literally just got off a plane and I was not expecting to speak, but I am delighted to have the opportunity. I am probably one of the few people in Parliament who was actually at the signing of the Ottawa Convention 10 years ago. The campaign against anti-personnel landmines is something that I have been very heavily involved in over many years. So I very much welcome this debate.
I think it is very important that we keep our minds on the real problem. When we were all at Ottawa 10 years ago, we hoped that this would be a problem that we would really eradicate over the coming 10 years. Well here we are, 10 years on, and we are still saying more or less the same things that we said 10 years ago, which I think is a great pity.
We have got to get the thing into perspective. We managed to have that ban on anti-personnel landmines because responsible armed forces recognised that they could take this particular weapon out of their armouries and they were fully behind it. We have got to be very careful that we keep our armed forces on board in these debates, so trying to widen the ban into all these other areas is sometimes unhelpful – when we talk about anti-tank mines, for example. These are weapons which we still need, to be used by responsible armed forces in our democracies. We should always point the finger at the real culprits. The real culprits are what some people politely term ‘armed non-state actors’. These are actually insurgents and terrorists and these are the people who are making greatest use of these weapons around the world.
If we look at the problem in Afghanistan at this moment: the anti-personnel landmines which are still being laid are being laid by the Taliban in Afghanistan. These are the people who are causing these problems at the moment. So we need to direct our attention in the right sort of way. I very much welcome the debate. I would like to think that we are putting the right resources into overcoming this problem, and that has my full backing."@en1
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