Mr President, Mr President of the Commission, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, ladies and gentlemen, Mr Simitis, the President-in-Office of the Council, quoted the statement from the summit to the effect that Iraq's territorial integrity must be maintained. I do believe though – and hence my dissatisfaction – that you ought also to have mentioned that this territorial integrity is at this very moment under the most massive attack and that our most important task is to end this war. It is my belief that we can see, from day to day, how it is becoming more evident that this war is becoming ever more inhuman and more contrary to international law. For Mr Rumsfeld, the American Secretary for Defence, to describe it – as he did yesterday – as a humanitarian act, is something I can regard only as cynicism of a fairly barbarous kind. I believe that when the USA started the war a week ago, it mounted an assault on the most important principle of law for civilised nations, that being the obligation to resolve conflicts by peaceful means. This is a tragedy, particularly because this was not merely an instance of obligations and international law being violated, but also because it wrecked a great and outstanding opportunity for effective peacemaking. I believe that any common foreign policy on the part of the European Union – something that has again been referred to today – must be not merely common, but also an alternative, countering the USA's unilateralism, military power politics, and disregard for law and treaties with a strengthened United Nations, with the defence of the UN Charter, of international law and of the international ban on the use of force. Any such policy must deal with conflicts – not only the specific conflicts themselves, but also their causes – and promote cooperation across the board. Mr President-in-Office of the Council, I would like right now – and without repeating too much – to draw your attention to three primary problems. For a start, my group continues to insist that this war be brought to an immediate end. Even though the numbers of the civilians and soldiers wounded or killed by bombs and other military measures are bad enough, neither the statements by the Council, nor the statements to the press, nor the statistics make any reference to the thousands of Iraqi children who are dying even now as a consequence of this war. Secondly, there is no doubt that this war puts the USA in breach of international law. It is even now openly threatening to break international law again. Last week, and quite openly, Mr Rumsfeld, the Secretary for Defence, ordered that the armed forces in the Gulf region be equipped with CS gas. You are well aware, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, that there is no exception to the ban on the use in armed conflict even of non-lethal gases such as CS gas, contained both in the Geneva Protocol and in Article 1 of the Chemical Weapons Convention. I call upon you to object to the US administration's disregard and violation of such crucial international treaties, and to do so in unmistakeable terms. Thirdly, in Iraq there are tens of thousands of Iranians opposed to the regime in their own country, as well as Kurdish refugees from Turkey. Lingering in refugee camps, their fate attracts no international attention. They are very much at risk from this war and the threat of massacre hangs over them. I beg you to ensure that their plight becomes public knowledge, and to tell your Iranian, Turkish, American and British partners that the European Union will keep a close eye on what becomes of these people. Above all, Mr Simitis, have the courage to demand that the USA put an end to this war! (Applause)

Political group: GUE-NGL