Mr President, the opposition in Abkhazia has stepped up its campaign against the breakaway republic’s leader, Ardzinba. Armenian and Turkish cultural workers have met in an Armenian monastery in Eastern Turkey. Eduard Shevardnadze’s son-in-law has been arrested at Tbilisi airport, suspected of corruption. Violent conflicts have taken place in Ajaria between supporters and opponents of the province’s leader, Abashidze. Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliev, has met his Armenian colleague, Robert Kocharian. Imprisoned Azerbaijani politicians have gone on hunger strike. The American FBI is to open an office in Tblisi. These and many more things have happened in recent days in our European sister countries, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia. It is not, however, from the European media that I obtained all this information, in spite of the fact that the three countries are members of the Council of Europe and the OECD and have their sights set on full membership of the EU. Neither the general European interest nor the EU’s official interest in the South Caucasus features very prominently if war and revolution are not the issue. The Council did not even wish to involve the South Caucasus countries in its strategy for a wider Europe, but fortunately appears to have changed its mind. At the European Parliament’s urgent request, a special representative was finally appointed in 2003. A number of other contributions have been made by the EU, especially in connection with the Regional Environmental Centre in Tbilisi. Generally, such efforts are too little, too late, as was seen in connection with Georgia's Revolution of Roses, in which the EU was overtaken by both Russia and the United States which both pursue classic power politics in their own interests. The EU claims to have other ambitions that have more to do with solidarity. In the South Caucasus, there are three countries that believe in the EU ideal and that want the EU to play the main role as peace broker and provider of aid. My report contains a large number of proposals as to what the EU should do politically, economically and in terms of peace. It is a question of influencing Russia to adopt a more constructive approach, of supporting the three countries’ precarious democratic institutions and of developing partnership between regions of the EU that govern themselves in the manner of Åland, Scotland and Catalonia and of Nagorno-Karabakh, South Ossetia and Abkhazia. This could show that self-government may be a reasonable alternative to full sovereignty. It is also a question of helping the South Caucasus escape from the nuclear power trap, of developing renewable forms of energy and of ensuring that oil assets are handled in accordance with international environmental rules. It is a question of practical conflict resolution, for example through the opening of the Baku to Jerevan railway line in exchange for the withdrawal of Armenian troops from Azerbaijani provinces. To my surprise, I see that the largest political groups are moving the rejection of this, but approval of Amendments Nos 5 and 18 would seriously upset the sensitive balance of the report. The same applies to Amendment No 2 by the Group of the European Liberal, Democrat and Reform Party. If we were to approve this and delete the reference to our own 1987 decision in connection with the deaths of countless Armenians in 1915, the balance of the report would shift in favour of the one side. This means that I am able to support all the amendments apart from Amendments Nos 2, 5, 6, 16, 17 and 18. I have withdrawn Amendment No 9 and, in Recital P, I propose a split vote so that the word ‘blockade’ can be deleted, because there is no blockade. There are, however, considerable restrictions, which is bad enough and something that I criticise, but the correct choice of words is very important in situations such as these. Parliamentary elections are to be held in Georgia on 28 March 2004. This will be the crucial test of what democracy amounts to in the Revolution of Roses. With a seven per cent barrier, there is a danger of all opposition being excluded from Parliament. I know, partly following a one-to-one meeting with the Georgian Prime Minister, Zurab Zhvania, in Rome the other day, that the Georgian leadership is concerned. Not enough is being done, and measures are required, perhaps a lowering of the barrier, if Georgia is not to become the odd phenomenon of the world’s first democratic one-party state. Finally, we have all been exposed to lobbying. This is legitimate and can provide valuable information, but it would not be good if, this afternoon, one of the parties to all the conflicts that exist in the South Caucasus were to be able to declare itself the victor and say that the European Parliament was on its side. I have tried to write a balanced report that does not come down on the side of any one party but simply on the side of peace and sustainable development.

Political group: Verts-ALE