Mr President, to begin with, I would like to express my regard for the statement made by the President-in Office of the Council this morning. It underlined the urgency and importance of what is happening in East Timor, where militias continue their endeavours to smother the struggle for independence in blood. We received information only the other day, both from Human Rights Watch and from Oxfam, and of course we have been able to see it with our own eyes on television. As we speak, it is evening in East Timor. It is precisely when it is dark, when night falls, that the civilian population is most afraid. Therefore, as a Parliament, the least we can do here is to express our support for that civilian population and for their legitimate aspirations. And that is why we support the idea of an international tribunal for calling the guilty to account, and why we will take action to protect the refugees. Mr President, I would like to join our parliamentary delegation of observers which was sent out on the initiative of the President of our Parliament and under the excellent leadership of the Vice-President of our Parliament, Mr José Pacheco Pereira. The Finnish Presidency is deserving of praise here too, for it initiated the idea of sending a delegation on behalf of the European Union. Whereas up until recently Portugal was practically the only country to carry this torch, now all the countries of the European Union are rallying behind the East Timorese struggle for independence. But, ladies and gentlemen, involvement of this kind comes at a price. We went to East Timor to reassure the population that they could vote in safety, and overwhelmingly large numbers of people have done so. But after we left, these same people were again put to the sword by the pro-Indonesian militias. Ladies and gentlemen, we cannot stand by and let this happen. If we were to do so, it would mean that our delegation had been nothing more than a pointless exercise in referendum tourism. I would also like to draw your attention to developments in East Timor in the longer term. There has been an immediate and generous response from the European Union in terms of humanitarian emergency aid, but once the country has gained its independence it will be necessary to provide support for economic development and it will be at least as important to give our support to the establishment of democratic institutions. There is absolutely nothing of that kind in East Timor. No political parties, no system for the administration of justice, not a single functioning institution apart from the Church. I believe that a programme along the lines of the one we undertook in South Africa would be appropriate. Mr President, the campaign for the referendum was the most one-sided campaign I have ever experienced. Every attempt to pursue the campaign for independence met with violence. Yet still the people of East Timor voted overwhelmingly in favour of this independence. The protection that the Indonesian authorities were unable or unwilling to provide must now be immediately provided, without prior conditions, by an international peacekeeping force. We owe that to the people of East Timor, we owe that to UNAMET, which has carried out such excellent work, and we owe it to ourselves. Mr President, the people of Indonesia are themselves, or at least we hope this is the case, on the road to democracy, and have more than enough problems to come, even without East Timor. In future, we must turn our attention to these problems too. Nevertheless, it was right to suspend the bilateral aid for Indonesia for the time being, as we have learnt from recent experiences that pressure must be kept up until the whole process reaches a satisfactory conclusion.

Political group: ELDR