Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, I think it has been shown that the strategy pursued in Afghanistan by the coalition against terrorism is the right one. It has also been shown that this is not merely a matter of hunting down terrorists, but also liberating a nation from a government which is far from popular among its own people. This has been shown quite clearly, and I think we should say so in all frankness in order to make it clear in this way that we have nothing against an Islamic people; on the contrary, we want to work with it to build a future in freedom. Of course, this also means, and this is borne out by Afghanistan's history, that we should work together with its own government and respect its decisions, and that it is not our task to involve ourselves in the details. I think this is also extremely important if the task of creating a government of reconciliation in Afghanistan is to be mastered successfully. Here, the European Union must take an active role with its conflict prevention and civilian crisis management capacities and help organise the reconstruction of the country on this basis, as long as this is what the parties involved want. In more general terms, the events of recent weeks have shown that in the areas where the European Union functions effectively, it can make a significant contribution. I do not believe that the coalition against terrorism would have operated as effectively in the Middle East without the European Union and the visits by its troika. On the other hand, we must acknowledge that in the military field, where we are particularly weak, we have continued to rely heavily on bilateralism and directed solutions. I think it is clear that in all areas of security and defence policy, we must move more resolutely towards a community approach. It must become clear that even the larger Member States, which think they still have a role to play, actually had no influence on all the strategies which have been enforced. We must therefore accept that we will only have a role to play if we act jointly, if we achieve our common goal of establishing a 60 000-strong rapid deployment force by 2003, and if we underpin our conflict prevention and crisis management capacities credibly with this third component. I also think that this must, to a substantial extent, be discussed in the light of Laeken and in the context of the post-Nice process. Time and again, when we are active in the foreign policy field, we see the extent to which our inadequate structures prevent us from bringing our full weight to bear. I am thinking in particular of the frequent organisational chaos in the Balkans and the competition not only between Solana and Patten but also between the parallel structures which were established and which, as experience has shown, work against and not with each other. These structures must be rationalised, perhaps in the hands of the Commission with their own legitimation via the Council. In my view, these are the lessons we have learned from the last two months, and we should call on the governments in our countries to respond appropriately. I believe it is necessary, in the interests of the future viability of our nations, to cultivate this community method to a greater extent in future in the field of foreign and security policy too. (Applause)

Political group: PPE-DE