Mr President, Mr Solana, we are all behaving like children. You are building castles in the air and your route map up to the year 2003 calls for 60 000 soldiers. It is extraordinary what decisions we took in Sintra concerning 2004, 2005, 2006. But what about Kosovo in the year 2000? You have spoken to Mr Gil-Robles. I have received an e-mail from a former colleague, Pierre Pradier, who is in Pristina at the moment. He tells the story of a Serbian doctor who has just been murdered in Pristina. He treated Roma, Albanians and Serbs and that is something unforgivable in Kosovo. A man with three children and he was murdered. We need policemen in Kosovo right now! We need soldiers who do not have a doctrine to put into practice. I am not a warmonger, but if we do not have soldiers to stop the criminals in Kosovo, then what is the point in having soldiers at all? People may have to risk their lives in Kosovo, but that is the price of freedom at the moment. If we allow what is happening today in Kosovo to continue – border provocation, Serbian provocation, Albanian provocation, etc. – we are heading for war. Tell me, what civilian forces are being mobilised, Mr Patten? We need a civilian task force in Kosovo now to monitor what is happening, and to tell the military and the police what they must do, otherwise everything we did in Bosnia and everything we did in Kosovo will be negated by the reality of a country that is sinking deeper and deeper into violence. (Interruption from the extreme right by Mr Martinez) We have a major problem, because we are providing travel warrants for the people, but we are incapable of acting when there is an enormous humanitarian crisis, as in Chechnya. Mr Poettering is right – when he is right you have to tell him so. He is not always right, but in this case he is. I am in favour of a hardline policy against Austria, but we shall then have a responsibility towards Russia. I do not like foreign ministers who say nothing – whether they are German and from my party, whether they are French from the broad left or whether they are Italians from any party! In the current situation, we should say to the Russians “If you want money, if you want us to reduce your debts, you must allow a civilian peacekeeping force into Russia”. If not, we are not prepared to pay for their war, since, by reducing the debt, by giving them money, we are paying their soldiers to carry out the massacres. We are accomplices in the massacres in Chechnya if we continue to give money to the butchers. (Applause) It is not enough just to say, “You, the murderers, please stop the slaughter!” They know full well that they should not commit these acts. Do you think that Mr Putin does not know that what he is doing in Chechnya is not good? But that is his strategy, he instigated this war. From the beginning, he wanted this war in order to become president. So that is the world as it is today. For that reason I say to you: my Group is not entirely in agreement, but I am in favour of European defence. I believe that European defence should be scrutinised by the European Parliament and by the national parliaments. First of all, the European Parliament must give the green light to something and then the national parliaments will decide whether or not to send their soldiers. If a civilian task force can, at the same time, intervene before and during a conflict and if we fail to take that step, we are behaving like children who like to play at sending in soldiers, but who are incapable of sending in civilians. As long as we do not have a balance between the military and the civilian elements, we shall not be credible.

Political group: Verts-ALE