Strasbourg, 11/04/2002 (Agence Europe) - On Wednesday several members of the Socialist group explained why they voted against the European Parliament resolution calling for a suspension of the EU-Israel Association Agreement (adopted by 229 to 208 with 22 abstentions in plenary, see yesterday's EUROPE, p.4).
The strongest views were expressed by François Zimeray (France) who said this was an exceptional sanction that in the past had been reserved for Sudan, Nigeria, Serbia and Togo and felt the European Parliament had committed a "political error" and a "moral mistake", arguing that it was a mistake to want to save Arafat the soldier, who has chosen the worst throughout his life and betrayed the peace camp, or to being from the assumption that there is no choice other than Arafat and anybody taking over from him would inevitably plunge the region into chaos, since Palestinian civil and political society are not lacking in talent or good will. Accusingly he asked is Italy with its Genoa carabinieri or Sweden with its armed Gothenburg police that are going to give Israel lessons in keeping public order? Is France whose contingent was camped at Srebrenica's doors during the massacre, or Spain that as we know suppresses the Basques terrorists, or England that censored the Falklands War going to give Israel a lesson in transparency? More restrained, another French Socialist Harlem Désir, said that Europe could not get involved in a process of breaking with Israel and one couldn't forget that it was the Holocaust of Jews in Europe and the inability to prevent this barbarism from occurring in its territory that had led to the creation of the state of Israel. He said that breaking the Association Agreement would not help Europe become the unavoidable interlocutor it wants to be. Belgian Socialist Jean-Maurice Dehousse said that Israel owed its existence to international law and cannot behave as if international law didn't exist and as if the Security Council hadn't decided anything, but accused Arafat of being a trickster playing a double gam, a war leader encouraging, organising and paying terrorists while claiming to condemn them.
The President of the Socialist group, Enrique Baron, on the other hand, welcomed the adoption of the resolution. DS MEP Pasqualina Napoletano admitted to the press that the PES would have preferred the resolution to have achieved a bigger vote. She herself had negotiated on behalf of the Socialists, along with Germany's Jannis Sakellariou, a compromise document with the other groups. Philippe Morillon (France) and Ilkka Suominen (Finland) had negotiated for the EPP-ED, and this had given rise, said Ms Napoletano, to a document that didn't exactly reflect the Socialists' position, but which they could accept. Most of the EPP-ED group didn't support their own negotiators and this led to a degree of confusion in the group when it came to voting, she explained, adding that by voting against parts of the paragraph on the suspension of the EU-Israel Association Agreement, the EPP-ED had ended up, without being aware of it, helping strengthen the acceptance of the resolution. Ms Napoletano was accompanied by Giovanni Fava (who had just returned from Ramallah, and called for Europe to meet duty of being a peaceful presence in the region) and by the Palestinian National Authority's representative in Italy Nemer Hamad (who welcomed the European Parliament's position that strengthened, he said, the hand of moderate and pacifist elements in Israel).