Mr President, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, Commissioner, 11 September is almost upon us, the first anniversary of that day when two aircraft, piloted by terrorists belonging to al—Qa’ida, crashed into the World Trade Centre, caused both towers to collapse, killed thousands of people and, at a stroke, changed the world – or, at least so we thought at the time. There have indeed been changes. Under UN mandate, an alliance against terrorism was forged. For the first time, a crisis was declared to be a matter for NATO, Article 5 of whose Treaty was invoked. The American President Bush called for the head of Osama Bin Laden, the Saudi billionaire who headed up the al—Qa’ida network, and the war against terrorism met with its first significant success in Afghanistan itself, where the fundamentalist Taliban regime, which was generally inhumane and in particular hostile to women, was driven from power and an interim government under President Karzai, which is putting down democratic roots, was established. One year on, we are of course all aware that the struggle against terrorism, as President Bush himself once said, will be a long one at various levels, and that quick victories are illusory. In Afghanistan itself, the Karzai government enjoys de facto power only in Kabul. The authority of the various provincial rulers belonging to different tribes is undiminished, and has, in some instances, even been reinforced, a fact demonstrated just as much by the murder of Commander Massoud as by the murder of Afghanistan's Vice-President Abdul Qadir, who had incurred the enmity of rival drug baron, supporters of Osama Bin Laden and of the Taliban, but possibly also of members of the Northern Alliance who had felt themselves bypassed. It is also far from clear whether or not Osama Bin Laden is still alive. What is beyond doubt is that the al—Qa’ida network has regenerated itself and reorganised both its guerrilla organisation, which is active not only in the neighbouring Pakistan, and also its sources of finance, which continue to flow in abundance. Anyone reading today's Herald Tribune will find a sobering report on the transfers of gold to Sudan through channels running from Pakistan and Iran. This means that the al—Qa’ida network and the Taliban militias still have large reserves of finance at their disposal, derived from the cultivation and sale of opium. Set against the sums involved here, the aid given by the European Union towards stabilising the situation in Afghanistan looks rather modest, even though the EU has become the largest donor of funds for this purpose. There is no doubt that we have to do this in order to bring peace to this country once under Soviet Communist occupation and ravaged by decades of civil war and thus make a contribution to consolidating the crisis region between Pakistan, Iran, India and the unstable Asiatic part of the former Soviet Union. We also have to do it for reasons of self-protection. Europe is a destination not only for Afghan drugs, but also for illegal immigrants, in the number of whom there has been a significant increase on the borders between the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Austria over the past year. There is, then, a need for humanitarian aid just as much as for targeted measures in the fight against terrorism and organised crime, a fight we will certainly have to carry on for a long time yet, and one in which we can expect no quick victories. Yet do it we must, if we are to demonstrate to the USA that we are to be taken seriously as a partner in an alliance against terrorism. Relations with the USA in the aftermath of 11 September have, to put it mildly, been beset by irritations. We are both saddened – Europeans when America goes it alone, and the USA by the European Union's lack of political unity and its military weakness, both exemplified by the EU's line on Iraq, which has to date been less than coherent. Also symptomatic of this are the USA's threatening gestures directed at Baghdad, which are not always credible. What is needed on both sides of the Atlantic is coherent crisis management combating not only the symptoms of international terrorism, but also and especially its causes, as rightly demanded by the former White House security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski. Developing such a strategy to pull the plug on the crises in the Middle East, settle the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, and neutralise Islamic political fundamentalism wherever it rears its head – and it has its boltholes in Europe itself – to all these things, the European Union can and must make a substantial contribution. EU aid in Afghanistan is an essential building block in this. (Applause)

Political group: PPE-DE