Mr President, Mr President-in-Office, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, on Tuesday night some 90 people died in a brutal terrorist attack in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia. The victims included both Saudis and Europeans – as far as we know, French, British, German, one Swiss – and Australians. This shows once again that the challenges posed by terrorism do not just affect the Americans, they affect us all, and the lesson we should learn from this appalling terrorist attack in Riyadh should be that we need to join together to fight terrorism resolutely throughout the world. The President-in-Office was right to refer to Chechnya. The European Parliament – well my group at least, but I think this also applies to the other groups – will be considering very carefully what further progress can be made towards a peaceful solution in Chechnya. Following the Iraq war, we Europeans need to decide what lessons we can learn from experiences which have been painful for Europe as well, and we must make it clear that there is no cause for defeatism. During this unhappy period of lack of European unity I have often heard it said this makes nonsense of the Common Foreign and Security Policy. No, we must treat this crisis as an opportunity to be seized and make sure that in future we do better than with the Iraq crisis and the Iraq war. Above all, we need to make sure that before one Member State or a number of Member States adopt a national position and then go public, we should discuss our respective standpoints within the European Union so that we can arrive at a common position. (Applause) This demand is also aimed at the two European members of the United Nations Security Council. The Maastricht Treaty already stipulates that before Member States who are members of the Security Council vote, they should first consult with their partners in the European Union, and that is the lesson we should learn from the past few weeks. I would also like to add – and this concerns our relations with the United States – that those people who think that a united Europe should be created in opposition to the United States are on shaky ground, because if we build up Europe in opposition to the United States, then at least half, if not more, of all Europeans would turn their back on a united Europe, so there is in fact no alternative to creating a Europe that does not oppose the United States, but is an equal partner of the USA. Let me add a further point. One voice in America suggested that Europe could be divided into New Europe and Old Europe. On a recent visit to Warsaw I realised that they are not happy with that suggestion there. Warsaw – Poland – is part of the Old Europe and shares our roots, and we should not allow anyone to divide Europe into two halves. No, it is up to us to act in unison. Now let me turn to Iraq. We are bound to have a strong interest in civil order being swiftly re-established, and when we are talking about the relationship between the European Union and the Arab Islamic states we often say that there cannot and must not be any clash of civilisation, and the same of course applies to order in Iraq. Iraq’s population includes Shiites, Sunnis and Christians, Arabs and Kurds, and I believe that one area where we really may be able to help – and if we can help, then we should – is to ensure that peace and order prevail in Iraq, and that there is no conflict between the various religious or ethnic groups. I believe that the European Union has an important role to play here, and on behalf of my group I welcome the fact that you have been to Iraq, Commissioner Nielson. It is of course very difficult to say at this point here in the European Parliament whether the United Nations is to be given an exclusive role, and what role we as the European Union and others are to play – NATO perhaps, and the United States and the United Kingdom as the two powers that intervened there. That is hard to say, but what we can say is that we call on everyone involved there – and particularly the Europeans, including our Polish partners and friends – for we Europeans to take whatever action we take in concert, once we have agreed on a common position. There are enormous humanitarian challenges in Iraq, and I believe that we can make a contribution to security there, to the establishment of a police force, to water supply, to healthcare and to a new political order in general. In conclusion, let me say this: we do of course have questions for our American friends and partners. So far, no weapons of mass destruction have been found. I recommend that the search for them should be continued, as that was the basis for intervention, and its political credibility is dependent on that, which is why we need to take that question very seriously indeed. (Applause) What we need to achieve now is a peaceful solution in the Middle East between Israel and Palestine, and that was indeed our great hope following the Kuwait crisis in 1991, when I was very much in favour of the liberation of Kuwait and the firm action against Saddam Hussein that it involved. We must seize this opportunity now. The credibility of our policy will also depend on our success in achieving a peaceful solution there, and I call on all of us to make a united and decisive contribution as Europeans. (Applause)

Political group: PPE-DE