Mr President, this is the second time that we have welcomed the High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy, and I am among those who wish for such occasions to take place fairly regularly. What my Group deplores, however, Mr Solana, is that you seem to wish to fulfil your important responsibilities in far too unilateral a fashion. First of all, you only deal with the security considerations in their military dimension, by making virtual deadlock with regard to what we believe is essential, that is to say, a major policy of prevention, very much upstream of the risks of conflict, that would in itself deserve a common strategy at Union level. Furthermore, in the autonomous defence capability that you propound, if what you claim as a defence capability to be mobilised is only too clear, as it involves on average the doubling of the expenditure invested in the military field, its autonomy is, on the contrary, much more of a problem, judging by the degree of NATO, and therefore United States’, involvement in European decisions on defence that one part of the Council and, it would seem, you personally, wish for. Finally and in particular, we hardly hear you speak at all about the other part of your mission: the foreign policy of the Union. In our view, you cannot be content with a kind of minimum service in this field, as current events remind us at the moment.For example, take the case of Chechnya. For six months now, owing to sordid ambitions of power, the Russian administration has been conducting a dirty colonial war, piling on more dreadful atrocities every day. Beyond the rather general remarks that you have made and that you are no doubt going to reiterate here, what is the Union’s current strategy towards Russia? Forgive me for saying so, but up to now we have only observed lenience and inertia, while this great country is sinking before our eyes into an increasingly uncontrollable and dangerous situation for the peace and security of the whole continent. As regards the Middle East, the peace process is getting bogged down and tensions are again rising in a very worrying way. What initiatives do the Fifteen envisage to prevent the glimmer of hope that arose at the time with the defeat of Mr Netanyahu from being, in turn, extinguished, opening the way for something worse. In the Balkans, a year after the NATO bombings started and in the light of the significant crisis in Mitrovica, are you prepared to carry out a critical evaluation of the whole strategy implemented in this region in order to learn some useful lessons? In the South, particularly Africa, the unbearable pictures that we have seen from Mozambique cannot be explained solely by the natural disaster, but reflect the pitiless consequences of under-development. They call into question the ambitions that we set ourselves with regard to this part of the world and, consequently, the changes to be advocated in the current world order, or rather, disorder. Finally to the Echelon network: are you, at the very least, going to ask that this incredible affair be tabled on the agenda of the next European Union-United States Summit? My Group would like our dialogue, our cooperation and, where appropriate, our political confrontations, to be included too, and primarily, among these issues. Many people expect that of us, in Europe and throughout the world. I think these meetings are not to be missed.

Political group: GUE-NGL