Skopje, 13/09/2001 (Agence Europe) - The President of the EP, Nicole Fontaine, made a speech on 13 September in Skopje to the parliament of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) in which she explained that the European Parliament, as joint decision-making power for the EU's budget, would leave no stone unturned to provide Macedonia with financial support. In essence, she said that all Europeans have a debt to pay to the Macedonians for all that they did during the Kosovo tragedy and that should the Macedonians so decide, Europeans would like the country to join the European Union at some point in the future. She went on to say that despite the tensions, she was convinced that the FYROM's honourable past (when they welcomed several hundred thousands of terrified Kosovars who had lost all their possessions) was a sign of hope for the future - the tragedy of war had given rise to inter-ethnic solidarity with the refugees.
Ms Fontaine called on FYROM's "men of peace", if they wanted help from abroad to maintain the fragile equilibrium that the peace agreements had instigated, to show understanding and mutual co-operation so that FYROM spoke with a single voice to the international community since this was an essential prerequisite for speedy adoption of decisions on the aid requests. She stressed that the safety of the EU and OECD's observers had to be guaranteed. She also highlighted the respect of FYROM's territorial integrity and better recognition of national minorities (particularly their languages), mentioning that other nations had had to respect pluralism, such as Switzerland, Belgium or Canada.