Plenary Speech by Graham Watson - 29th March 2007

Speech delivered on Thu 29th Mar 2007

Graham Watson, on behalf of the ALDE Group. - Mr President, at the very start of his mandate, the High Representative made the Middle East the main focus of his work. We congratulate you on that, High Representative. We admire your indefatigable energy and your diplomatic skills, and we hope that with a new government in Palestine, the European Union will indeed be able to help in setting this country firmly on the road to a lasting peace and to peaceful co-existence with Israel.

High Representative, you say that deeds are more important than words and that we must determine our behaviour towards the new Palestinian Government in response to its actions; but I would urge you, rather, to take the initiative with this new government. It has a great need to establish a functioning administration on its territory. The temporary implementation mechanism is both costly and cumbersome and the commitment of the state of Israel to allowing that new government to work is far from clear. We need to take the initiative, for if we hesitate, we may lose the opportunity to secure a lasting peace and peaceful coexistence.

High Representative, you certainly do not lack courage. Your efforts in trying to secure peace in the Middle East and the development of democracy and the rule of law are undertaken in probably the most difficult circumstances. My group agrees with you that a political solution is best in our relations with Iran over the nuclear issue. We commend your efforts to restart negotiations with Mr Larijani. We view UN sanctions as being a last resort and we would urge you, in the contacts and the relationships that you are building, to use all of the Union's efforts to release the British sailors and marines who are being held there. HMS Cornwall is based in my constituency. Many of the people involved are my constituents. We are very keen to see them released as soon as possible. Perhaps you can also turn your attention again to Libya, to see if we cannot get the Bulgarian nurses back to Bulgaria in time to vote in the European elections on 20 May.

(Applause)

You spoke of Darfur. It has to be at the top of our agenda, not only for the security reasons you mentioned, but because our inability to prevent the first genocide of this century would send the wrong signal about Europe's role and potential within the world. I urge you to work together with the United States and with other major nations to try to bring a solution there, in particular bringing in UN troops to establish security which the African Union is not capable of achieving.

We welcome your renewed emphasis on the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. If the United Kingdom and France renew their nuclear weapons, if the USA builds a missile shield, then the message we are sending to the Russians and others is that we are engaging in a new arms race. Quite apart from the fact that this 'son of star wars' might turn out to be a Maginot Line in the sky, we should not be engaging in this kind of diplomacy.

You say the European Union has no legal powers, but we must discuss the missile shield. However, unless you actually take the initiative and set the agenda, that agenda will be set for you by the actions of the individual Member States. We welcomed the initiative of Commissioner Rehn, when, in the face of growing difficulties with Turkey, he established sanctions by suspending negotiating chapters and brought the Member States around behind him. We would like to see you do that to ensure that we have a common response to the development of this missile shield.

High Representative, you are responsible for access to documents. We have talked a lot about the need for an agreement on access to documents in the second and third pillars. These documents are not within the purview of national parliaments, and the Solana/Brok accord gives us no solid legal basis. When our temporary committee on extraordinary rendition asked you last year for the minutes of the Committee of Legal Experts of the Member States, they were given a two page document. We later discovered that there is a fuller, six-page document, and I would simply ask you here today if, in the spirit of loyal cooperation set down in Article 10, you would clarify to this House - perhaps to the Conference of Presidents - whether the minutes received by the chairman of our temporary committee were indeed a full or just a partial record of the proceedings of that meeting. You will appreciate the importance of this matter.