Brussels, 21/03/2003 (Agence Europe) - At its pre-European Council summit, held on Thursday in Meise (near Brussels), Wilfried Martens's European Popular Party adopted a common position on the situation in Iraq, in which it hopes that the military intervention will have as few victims as possible, and that it will "disarm the dictator Saddam Hussein and free the Iraqi people". The EPP stresses that the EU has a "moral obligation to prove its solidarity with the victims of this crisis, and to provide them with humanitarian and financial aid", and that, after the war, it must give the Iraqi people the benefit of its experience in terms of "establishing a democratic society". The EPP also feels it is essential "to install a post-war leadership which has the people's trust, and which can manage the transformation of society needed to stabilise Iraq as quickly as possible". It also recognises the "central role of the UN Security Council in defining international policy on peace and stability", supports the "strengthening of transatlantic relations in terms of mutual respect", "strengthened relations with Arab countries" and re-launching the peace process in Israel. Lastly, the common position pleads for the development of "an effective Common Foreign and Security Policy in the enlarged European Union", and hopes for "a positive outcome of the European Convention". Discussions of this text appear to have sparked some fairly lively contributions, particularly by Spanish Prime Minister José Maria Aznar.
Of the Heads of Government taking part in the Summit, Italy's Silvio Berlusconi thought (referring to France and Germany) that with "a more realistic policy, we could have avoided this division (between the Fifteen), given the determination of the United States, which it was impossible to shout down with different objectives". For the future, he insisted on the need for a Europe which "is genuinely a single political subject, with a single foreign policy" and which can "share responsibility for world order, with US relations based on loyalty and friendship".
According to Reuters, the Luxembourg Prime Minister, Jean-Claude Juncker, thought that Wim Duisenberg should remain in his job as President of the European Central Bank for longer (than 6 July, his planned leaving date), due to various concerns weighing heavily on his successor.