Mr President, it is time – it is now even urgent – that Mr Patten took over from Mr Blair. (NL) Let there be no misunderstanding, ladies and gentlemen, I am not talking about the position of the British Prime Minister. I am talking about the person who articulates, and can influence, public opinion in Europe. I therefore beg to differ with the cynics who claim that it makes no difference what we say here in the European Parliament, or what the Commission or the Council says, because the Americans will do what they want anyway. Of course, the Americans do as they please, but fortunately for us, the Americans themselves have not yet worked out exactly what that is. There are prominent politicians – and we have heard them all – who very much mind what Europe and the EU think in this respect. The majority of the Americans do not want the United States to go to war on its own. This provides the European Union with a unique opportunity of very much being able to influence the debate in the United States and that in the United Nations. We do, however, need to know what we do not want to happen and what we want to happen as an alternative to preventive attacks, which my group emphatically denounces. I should like to mention a number of key points which the European Union, the Council and the Commission should, in my view, make at all the forums that matter, and I have complete faith in Mr Patten's ability to do a much better job than Mr Blair. First of all, as everyone has already mentioned, we should bring maximum pressure to bear in order to get weapons inspectors admitted to Iraq, with complete freedom of action to trace and destroy what they find. Next are the much-debated smart sanctions. Admittedly, the current system is an improvement on that of a couple of years ago, but even this system of sanctions is still too hard on the population and too soft on the regime. I wish that Europe and the United States were a little more resourceful in coming up with sanctions that hit the regime and spare the population as much as possible. There is a great deal to be done in this area, and Europe should invest some of its resourcefulness in this. If Saddam is to go – and this is what we want; in fact, my group has been insisting on this since the late Eighties when the Americans, the British and French were still supplying him with weapons – this is not only possible by means of intervention from outside, however necessary that may be, but also by providing Iraq with an alternative. This means that we, the European Union, must support the development of a civil society and also the Iraqi opposition, which is currently too dispersed and too divided. If not, there will be chaos and no democratic alternative after the attacks and after Saddam's departure. As has, fortunately, been said by various group chairmen, the road to Baghdad does not only go via the United Nations, it also goes via Jerusalem. Without any progress in the relations between Israel and the Palestinians, there is no chance whatsoever of the Arab world supporting whatever action from the European Union. Europe can very much influence the debate on what should happen to remove Saddam if it speaks with one voice and has an alternative to hand. I repeat that preventive attacks are not a normal course of action in foreign policy. What is normal is pressure from the United Nations, sanctions and the provision of an alternative.

Political group: Verts-ALE