Brussels, 06/07/2005 (Agence Europe) - On Wednesday, the European Parliament adopted a resolution on Iraq (Rapporteur: Girogos Dimitrakopoulos, EPP-ED, Greece) in which MEPs call for foreign troops deployed in Iraq (essentially American and British) to be replaced by a United Nations peace-keeping force. The EU should encourage the adoption of a new Security Council resolution to this end. The EP also “expresses the need to move on from past events” such as the deep differences over the war in Iraq and “to look towards the future”. The EP states “great concern over the deteriorating security situation in Iraq, and hopes that the lessons learned from the Iraq war will lead to more multilateral, democratic and result-oriented conflict management worldwide in the future”. Nonetheless, MEPs recognise that the fall of Saddam Hussein's “repressive regime” has opened the way to a peaceful, safe and democratic future for the Iraqi people. The EP also stresses that the reconstruction and the development of the Iraqi economy means the exercise, by Iraqis, of total control of the country's natural resources and the use of oil sale revenue.
The debate that preceded the vote was above all marked by the confrontation between those who - like the rapporteur - consider that one should leave past tension created by the war in Iraq behind to turn to the future, to reconstruction and to democratisation of the country, and those on the contrary who consider that it will be impossible to work together in a constructive manner on the future of Iraq as long as “past errors” have not been fully assessed. It comes as no surprise that the British Council Presidency is among those who are urging the EU to wipe out the past, to move forward and to focus all its efforts on the priority of the moment, namely security, political stabilisation and economic reconstruction in Iraq. Jack Straw, British Foreign Minister, said the arguments of the past (for or against military intervention in Iraq) are well known, but that one should now look to the future. The security situation on the ground is “poor” but, “despite the violence today, most Iraqis prefer what is happening today to what was going on before under the Saddam Hussein regime, when there was state terrorism which led to the death of hundreds of thousands of people”. Mr Straw said he thought and still thinks that the war was justified at the time. Regarding the EP's request to gradually replace the armed forces of the foreign occupation in Iraq by a UN peace-keeping force, Mr Straw said “I have no difficulties in principle” but said the difficulty will be to encourage other countries to “come forward”. “The quicker the Iraqis can take over the responsibility for their own security, the better it will be and the quicker the coalition force will be able to leave”. At any rate, he recalled, the coalition forces are in Iraq only at the invitation of the Iraqi government, and that, if the Iraqi government decides they must pull out, then that is what they will do - immediately. Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner believes Iraq is a “real worksite in which there is still an enormous amount to be done”. The Commission intends to open a delegation in Baghdad in the near future, under the protection of British forces on the ground, she announced. While a large number of European representatives - for example José Ignacio Salafranca (EPP-ED, Spain), Swedish Liberal Cecilia Malmström and Ryszard Czarnecki (NA of Poland) - considered that one should wipe out the disagreements of the past to move forward with the rebuilding and democratisation of Iraq, others refuse to forget. “We are told we must turn the page. I am turning it. I shall not speak of the dozens of victims every day, the civilians who have been assassinated. I shall not speak of the Iraq, albeit free, that often looks like hell on earth, and I shall not speak of the incredible corruption there, the embezzlement of oil wealth and, above all, I shall not say that from the beginning to the end the war has been a tragic mistake”, Belgian Socialist Véronique de Keyser said. “Moving on from past events to turn to the future seems to me ethically offhand, politically dubious and strategically illusory”, the leader of the GUE/NGL Group, Francis Wurtz, asserted. He went on to say: “Let us recall once more that this war was engaged against the will of the international community and on the basis of a double lie: the existence in Iraq of stocks of weapons of mass destruction and the presence of Al Qaida in the country before 2003”. The war has changed Iraq into a “terrorist laboratory where Djihadists can experiment and learn about street fighting”, Mr Wurtz concluded.