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“War has begun and we’re entering a new and dangerous phase. Our thoughts go to the innocent Iraqi victims, whose humanitarian situation is already precarious. Our thoughts also go to our European fellow-citizens, especially the British, involved in the military operations and their families”. With these words the president of the European Parliament, Pat Cox, opened the extraordinary session of the Parliament dedicated to the Iraqi crisis yesterday, 20 March, in Brussels. “The Council and a large part of the debate in Europe said Cox has shown itself a ‘house divided inside’. And a divided house is a weakened house”. According to Cox, the “clear” message to be derived from this and that “we in the EP must transmit to the European leaders” is that “in the months ahead we must take to heart the need to work together and show greater coherence, greater presence and greater harmony in international affairs”. The spring Summit of the Heads of State and of Government of the EU also opened yesterday in the Belgian capital. Its agenda was drastically changed as a consequence of the Iraqi crisis. The current President of the Council, Greek premier Costas Simitis, “profoundly deplored the fact that no peaceful solution for Iraq had been found”. “The shadow of war weighs on this meeting”, said Simitis who expressed the hope that the war would be brief with “losses reduced to the minimum”. “The peoples of Europe – he concluded wish a common commitment to peace and progress. The presidency, in spite of the differences, hopes that it may prove possible to achieve common positions to demonstrate that Europe does have a voice of its own and a role to play”. Meanwhile on the website of the European Union a survey was conducted on the Iraqi crisis. By means of a questionnaire, an attempt was made to try to understand what the European population thinks of this war. According to the first results to emerge from over 83,000 questionnaires, “56.9% of people are of the view that this war should never be fought, a further 36.3% that this is not the right time to fight it. At the same time 47.8% think that Iraq probably does have weapons of mass destruction; 82.7% that the path to be pursued should be that of diplomacy; and 9.1% that Europe ought to remain neutral; in any case, Europe ought, in the view of 75.6% of those interviewed, to have a common position on questions of this kind”. ———————————————————————————————————– Sir Europa (English) N.ro assoluto : 1191 N.ro relativo : 21 Data pubblicazione : 21/03/2003
