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I understand that my big mistake, Mr Watson, was to have spoken from this podium. If you only have that to reproach me for, I can make amends, because the last time I was here, I spoke from this podium and I was not Head of State. When all is said and done, everyone can make a mistake.
As regards passports, I do not know who raised this problem of passports. Yes, passports were distributed, very widely, and therefore the people that I met, the Ossetian refugees, felt like Russian citizens, which is clearly very perverse. They felt like Russian citizens, they were welcomed in Russia and they were defended like Russian citizens. When you realise that apparently the same happened in the Crimea, you can only feel very concerned. We must therefore tackle this problem with the Russians in an extremely subtle but firm manner. They are distributing passports to populations that they deem to be Russian. However, this cannot be said without remembering that the borders of Russia were fairly arbitrarily drawn by Mr Gorbachev and Mr Yeltsin, at great speed and without taking account of history. I am not going to go into this problem. I do not want to dwell on the fact that Kiev was the capital of Russia and that the Crimea provides access to the seven seas. However, if you thought that the Russians were going to abandon the only tunnel passing between North Ossetia and South Ossetia, in other words crossing the Caucasus, then you were mistaken. We must understand these contradictions of history and also these contradictions of geography, but not give satisfaction to one side or the other. The Presidency of the European Union has not made any moral judgements about either side. It has been said that this action was excessive, that this was not the way to solve the problem, that this town should not have been bombed at night and that such a heavy attack should not have occurred in reply. However, once again, we need to know something about how this happened.
Mr Szymański, you said that only three points have been implemented. That is not bad as no one else has tried to do even one apart from us. Three points have been implemented and these were the three most important: ceasefire, withdrawal of troops and access to humanitarian aid. If that is all we have achieved, then we need not be ashamed. I believe it was very important to start with these. As for the other three, we should wait for 8 September because, after that, no pressure will be spared. We will decide all together what we should do. That means the 27 countries of the European Council and also Parliament which we have got into the habit of consulting in the meantime. In fact Jean-Pierre and myself have got into a constant habit of consulting you and talking to you. Nothing is taken for granted. If, on 8 September, we find that movements have begun, then alright. However, if nothing has been done, we must take another look. That is absolutely clear. Aggression cannot pay. Of course it cannot pay, but who should pay the price? I like the sermonisers who say, with regard to the Russian army, what did you expect? What should have been done? I note that the most resolute people and a number of those who will in fact tomorrow visit Georgia and who were very decided in their thundering replies will not do anything at all. I believe, like Francis Wurtz, that for a very long time Georgia has been encouraged to prove that it is, how should I say, robust and virile. I believe that this was not good advice because encouraging a country to prove itself to be vindictive, or in any event decided in its resistance, when it is not given the means, does not sit very well with me. I felt, together with the government, that, not only were they very unfortunate, because there were victims and because Georgians were in the streets not knowing which saint to pray to, but that there was also something like a feeling of abandonment among them. They were promised so much, they were promised a lot, and these promises were not kept.
As regards the Nabucco pipeline, of course there are explanations like that. It is a pipeline; it is oil that passes through it. Obviously all that must be taken into account, in one sense or another. This brings us back to what you said. I would point out, Mr Daul, that, in reality, that is not the only priority of the French Presidency. There is also energy and this is one way of truly focusing our attention – and this is in the text – on energy and on renewable energies, of course.
Mr Cohn-Bendit, what are we doing now? We have done what we could, namely to try and halt the war. Perhaps this was not perfect, perhaps the document is not perfect, perhaps it was quickly written and perhaps a struggle had to be fought between the two delegations in order to arrive at some sort of coherence. It was not at all perfect. However, in the end, it has worked for the time being. It is not sufficient, but it has worked. I completely agree that there are other difficult places, such as Nagorno-Karabakh, Nachichevan and others. There are plenty of places – and I do not think that the Russians are interested in these in the same way – such as Nagorno-Karabakh, but also other places, in particular the Crimea. There can be no doubt of this. It is not insulting the Russians to say that we are watching what is happening. That is actually our duty.
As regards NATO, I will say something else very cautiously. At the Bucharest Summit, we – the six founding countries of Europe – voted against the MAP. In fact, in the end, we did not vote, we did not even have to vote, because there was no unanimity. We therefore did not have to vote. The explanation was really very difficult and the six founding countries said that this is our neighbour. We must take into account that we have not been able to build or maintain adequate relations with this great country and that we do not want to leave it with a siege feeling, a kind of permanent siege. I believe that we were right. Now we are talking about anti-missile batteries set up in Poland and also in the Czech Republic. It is true that this is also not the way to dialogue, although they are not aimed towards Russia. However, what is important, without doubt more on the side of Iran and our policy towards Iran, is absolutely keeping the six together. Perhaps this policy could be conducted with Russia, and this is very important, because I believe that we would have a lot to lose by not retaining these channels of partnership.
How can we control the actions of Mr Saakashvili? I do not know, but a town cannot be bombed at night. I believe that a town should not be bombed at night. Once again, I do not know what the level of this bombing was, but how could they have expected any other reaction from Russia having done that? I do not understand.
I should just like to make a quick comment on the François Mitterrand quotation. François Mitterrand actually said: ‘Nationalism, to a point, is about culture and is what forms a nation. Too much nationalism is war.’ I wanted to correct that.
In response to Francis Wurtz, I should like to go back to the words ‘Cold War’, which he did not use but which he implied, because each time we hear all around: ‘are we returning to the Cold War?’ However, this cannot mark the return to the Cold War, firstly because the historical circumstances are totally different. There may be animosities, but I agree that we must absolutely condemn this expression. On the other hand, the need not to talk, but to re-form two blocks, one against the other, has been much mentioned. A number of the Members of this noble House, and in fact their countries, think like this. We must tackle this idea head on. I absolutely disagree with it. It is absolutely the opposite of what we should do and would clearly resemble Cold War, minus the ideology. That does not mean that we must absolutely accept all hyper-nationalist statements as we have done. We must find a way to talk and maintain these channels. That is what we are trying to do.
I would remind Francis that several of the proposals were made by Mr Medvedev in the security treaty that you mentioned, although he does not seem likely to apply this straightaway. Perhaps he will do so at a later date. He proposed this on 5 June to you all. He received the reply that it was interesting and that it was essential to take him at his word. However, we were immediately caught up by a small wave of panic.
The European Union apparently needs an independent policy from the US which is itself a great independent country. Mr Wojciechowski, that is what we have done. The European Union needs an independent policy from the US and from Russia. It needs an EU policy. That is what we have tried to do. The initial reaction of our American friends when we decided to get involved was not very kind. They thought that we should not do so but, very quickly, they realised, on the contrary, given that they are very pragmatic, that this was exactly what should be done. As a result, they were, shall we say, cooperative as it was Mrs Condoleezza Rice who got the six-point agreement signed. They were then extremely critical, not of the six-point agreement but of the fact that the Russians had not abided by it. This I can understand. We were also critical.
There are a number of questions which I can try to answer and others which I truly cannot. It is clear, Mr Daul, that we all want, particularly in relation to this crisis – and this is one of the priorities of the French Presidency – to successfully implement a European defence policy. What does ‘successfully’ mean? It means, in any event, that we must restart the process that allowed us, in Saint-Malo, to at least reach an understanding. We must then build on this with a common purpose. We will do this, or so I hope. In fact we must do this, but not because this crisis merited a military response. Not by any stretch of the imagination! To have considered a military response to Russia’s invasion of Georgia would have been worse than anything. In fact I do not believe that the vessels which arrived in the Black Sea were an appropriate response, as some of these vessels were carrying missiles. In my opinion, that was not what we should have done, but the French Presidency had the opposite opinion. In fact, in order to enjoy a solid European defence, which we do need, the Lisbon Treaty must be accepted, which brings us back to our own institutional difficulties. We absolutely have to find a way out of this institutional crisis.
My final point is about Pandora’s box and Kosovo. I wanted to talk to you about this. There is an intellectual tendency to compare Kosovo to Ossetia, with which I really cannot agree. We cannot say, just because there is a small population which feels, due to some particular nationalist urge, the need to be liberated, that this is the same thing. No! Firstly, in the Caucasus, people are in the habit of tearing each other to pieces in a truly violent manner with there being a great deal of profit in murder over the centuries. This is not at all the case with Kosovo and Serbia. What was different with Kosovo and Serbia was the unanimity of one group, 98% of Kosovars, and in particular the international decision. This was not because we bombed Serbia through NATO. In fact this occurred after nearly two years of the Contact Group, in which Russia was involved, and a Rambouillet conference which lasted over a month and at which everyone was in agreement except for Mr Milošević. What triggered everything, and I will end on this point, was the decision by Mr Milošević in 1999 at Kosovo Field, at Obilić, to declare that there would be no more autonomy, to hound the Kosovars out of the administration and to bring in Serbians from Belgrade to replace them, such that Mr Ibrahim Rugova, from the Democratic League of Kosovo, had to set up underground schools and clandestine hospitals. This is totally different. The process was accepted by international opinion because there had been a whole international approach. The Finnish President, Martti Ahtisaari, produced a document that everyone at the UN accepted and that said ‘the parties are not able to reach an agreement’. I am about to finish. There are some hatreds that cannot be overcome. I am sorry, I sensed – and I am being very careful in what I say – in the words of the Ossetians about the Georgians, something which resembled that undying hatred which is based on tens of years and centuries of opposition. This does not mean that one day this will not happen, but it will take time and several generations, I believe.
In my honest opinion, I do not think that NATO is the right response in this situation. It is in fact the wrong response as, if we had voted for the Membership Action Plan (MAP) in Bucharest, strictly speaking this would not have made any difference because I believe that no one was ready to make war on behalf of Georgia. I say this without any cynicism. I say this because this was the opinion that was truly unanimous at the start of all the meetings and conversations that we had. This does not mean – because we have said so – that neither Georgia nor Ukraine have the right to become members of NATO.
There is also something else to be considered. It is hard to say this at the moment, so I will be very discreet, but there is one country, Russia, which for 20 years felt that it was badly treated. I believe that, in one way, in particular here in the European Union, this was somewhat true. We were unable to find the language to speak to Russia. Perhaps we would not have been successful anyway, but I believe that we did not sufficiently realise that changes were happening because, after all, Georgia, 20 years ago, was itself also in the Soviet orbit. It was also a Communist country. On both sides there has been a truly incomplete exercise in democracy. I believe that, as with all countries, the problem will arise later on for Ukraine and for Georgia, but I truly do not believe that this was the response.
On the other hand, you are right: we must strengthen our relations with Ukraine, as mentioned in this document. This is also true for Georgia. We will talk in a minute about a privileged partnership.
To Mr Swoboda I would say – and this is an anecdote – that I wanted to go and see Stalin’s house in Gori, because that is where his house is. He was born there. You could say that he drew small red circles on the map to mark where there could be autonomy or, in any event, communities where there could not. He was very familiar with the region and already Ossetia and Abkhazia did not get on with either the Georgians or the rest of the region. We did not need this crisis to find out that there were conflicts in the area. What is worse than the Balkans? The Caucasus. What is worse than the Caucasus? The Balkans. I am not sure, but I think what is happening there is actually very widespread. If you go back just a bit further, if you think about what happened in Chechnya, which I strongly condemn, you can see that the allies of the Chechens were the Abkhazians against Georgia.
We should leave all that in the past, although it may be necessary to return to it. You have said, and I agree, that nothing justifies this reaction. Nothing. However, we must look at how this series of provocations has arisen because, honestly, the stories are so different that it all becomes very difficult. When we were in Moscow negotiating this document, we were asked how they should have reacted. Should they have left their own to die and allowed the bombings? Do not forget the initial figures. I am not going to discuss these because I really have no way of checking them, but the Russians straightaway talked about 1 000 to 2 000 deaths which is no doubt untrue because the only people who went there, namely Human Rights Watch, talked about a few hundred. In fact they reported hundreds, or even dozens. I am not sure. In any event, it was a reaction that theoretically was justified by the very high number of victims and, once again, I went to listen to the refugees in North Ossetia and the accounts were dreadful: grenades in basements where children were hiding. I have not made this up. Perhaps this was not true but there is a tone of voice that does not lie. I have seen many refugees in my life. These were scared witless. They had travelled for two days on this road through the tunnel. This must also be checked.
You are absolutely right that we need a neighbourhood policy, but that is exactly what the Turks are trying to do at the moment. The Turks have put in place what they are calling a regional platform and they want to set up talks between Russia, which has already agreed, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and – it is they who are responsible for this – obviously Georgia and Turkey. I think that this is a good idea and, on behalf of the Presidency, I have agreed to meet them very shortly. Mr Babachan should have been here today so that we could find out how to exchange our experiences, but I do agree with your analysis of the need for a neighbourhood policy. Mrs Benita Ferrero-Waldner must also agree with me that this is what we should do. They are our great neighbour. If they cannot find ways to talk to Russia, then we will certainly have great difficulty, all the more so as you heard Mr Medvedev say yesterday that sanctions could be applied in both directions and that he also knew how to do it. Sanctions do not amount to the same thing when one side supplies the gas and the other side does not want to receive it. We must therefore look realistically at the situation. It is he who turns the tap, not us.
Mr Watson, as regards the figures you gave, I agree with your sentiment. What has Mr Saakashvili done? When we had our discussions with him, given that I have met with him on two occasions, he said that – actually we should not go into that discussion because I would certainly be biased and I do not have enough information – but he said that he had been obliged to respond to the provocation. He had watched the other side prepare the batteries, and in particular the Grad rockets. They had arrived and set up in the Georgian villages around the capital of Ossetia. Who do we believe? I do not know. In any event, some advisors have said that things did not happen at all like the international press told it. There is no one really credible in this whole affair. As an observer, you know that the problem has not been solved. We have tried. Javier Solana says that we must call them observers. We are therefore calling them observers and in the text they are termed observers. Peacekeepers are something else because that would need the full withdrawal by the Russians of all those who took part in the battle. The resolutions on both Abkhazia and Ossetia indicated that there should be two-thirds/one-third. Two-thirds were responsible for keeping the peace, the Russian peacekeepers, and the rest were Georgians. Each accuse the other and they both accuse the peacekeeping forces decided by the OSCE and by the UN of having participated in both sides, right from the start of the battle. It therefore seems to me that this cannot continue and sending in peacekeepers is a bigger operation which we will try to set up. However, for the time being, it is going to be difficult. We need an international conference to resolve these conflicts that have reached a stalemate. For the moment we should try to have a conference on Ossetia as that is the most urgent, and then on Abkhazia."@en1
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