Your Highness, Excellencies, allow me just to give some perhaps additional European perspectives on the different issues that have been under discussion here. As John Chipman said, I came here more or less directly from the European summit, the heads of state in government as well as the foreign ministers of the 27 countries. We met on Thursday and Friday for one of our meetings in Brussels. We did that after concluding then the French presidency of the European Union. We met after a couple of months that have been unusually eventful for us all. We had the August war between Georgia and Russia, which has already been alluded to. Without going into the background of that, it is very difficult to detect very many saints in the Caucasus. It ended with the Russian army going in to not only South Ossetia and Abkhazia, but also Georgia proper in a way that was, to put it mildly, not entirely proper and certainly not in conformity with international law. We went into agreements in order to try to cool that down, conclude it and we will be preoccupied with that issue for quite some time. It has cast a fairly obvious shadow on the relationship with Russia.
In September, we had the near meltdown of the international financial system, which forced us into new actions, out of our self-interest that is fairly obvious, but also because this had obvious ramifications for the entire global system. The summit meeting we then had in Brussels was obviously dominated by some of these issues, by the financial and economic crisis where Europe has taken a fairly robust global leadership role as well, where we are now looking forward not only to the G20 meeting that is going to happen on 2 April in London, but also the following G8 meeting in Italy in July. Further measures are obviously necessary, not only to calm down the financial markets and get them to work in a proper way, but also to prevent a global recession from hitting us even harder than I think it is likely that it will do.
Energy and environmental issues will be very high up on the global agenda in the coming year and in years to come, where Europe is also taking a leadership role with the commitment not only in words but also in rather concrete deeds to reduce CO2 emissions by 20% by the year 2020. We called upon others – Americans, Indians, Chinese and others to follow that particular lead in the years to come.
What we did in Brussels was also to take stock of the evolution of the European security and defence structures. What we have done in the last year has been to develop new emissions that have been of a somewhat different nature from what we have done before. We deployed a force fairly rapidly into Chad and the Central African Republic at the request of the United Nations to contain the humanitarian consequences of the Darfur crisis and we succeeded in doing that, although the logistic challenge was quite substantial. We deployed very rapidly an observation mission to Georgia after that particular war in order to try to limit the fallout of that conflict and, as has been alluded to several times during the discussions here, we are in the process of launching a naval operation off the coast of Somalia, run not out of Paris, as was the Chad operation, but out of Northwood. That is the first time that the European Union is undertaking a naval mission, but I am quite certain not the last.
Mentioning that, it should be said that we are also heavily engaged, of course, in efforts to bring peace to Somalia itself, not only the waters off Somalia, but also the land in Somalia. That has not been a smashing success so far, to put it mildly, but we now have the Djibouti Peace Agreement and we must do whatever can be done to support the implementation of that Agreement. Not being overly optimistic but being committed to the political process at the same time as we are engaged in the humanitarian efforts in Somalia and in the anti-piracy and other efforts off the coast of Somalia. They should be seen as part of a whole.
By saying that, I also want to stress that when we go into operations of this sort we go into them and see them as comprehensive operations. They are military sometimes, sometimes dominating military, but they are always part of wider security and I would call them ‘state-building’ operations of a comprehensive and rather long-term nature. We are also engaged in somewhat complex missions to build the rule of law: police measures, judicial systems, in order to make states really function. We have one in Kosovo, which is a fairly complex area that has just been launched. We have extensive operations along these lines to build the rule of law and police forces in Palestine and, of course, in Afghanistan, which is of particular importance, where we need not only the Afghan national army but also the Afghan national police perhaps even more long-term in order to create the foundations for a functioning Afghan state. State-building is a comprehensive and long-term process and we need to have activities on all of these respective pillars.
Going more concretely to this wider region, it is of course a region of fairly obvious concern to Europe. We are neighbours; neighbours in terms of geography, but also with immensely deep cultural, historical and other links. That applies nowadays not only to the obvious suspects that you come to think of when you are discussing these particular terms, but also to a country like my own, Sweden. We are part of Europe but of course we are not the part of Europe that is the most adjacent to this particular region. However, if you look at Sweden nowadays, we have 40,000 refugees from Somalia, half of them being citizens of Sweden and half of them not yet citizens of Sweden or whatever their future might be. That is a fairly sizeable group. We have 1% of the population of Sweden coming from Iraq over the years. We have another 1% of the inhabitants of Sweden nowadays coming from Iran. This creates links of a nature we never had before, but also an obligation to be part of the efforts to help these particular countries and then to be partners in their cooperation in their future.
Of particular importance, and that was stressed very much in Brussels in the discussion between the prime ministers and presidents on Friday, is of course the Middle East peace process. We issued a particular strong call in Brussels of support for a re-launch of the Arab Peace Initiative in order to bridge a period in the peace process that is perhaps not as filled with oxygen as it should have been. We have a new American administration coming in later, we have elections in Israel, but we must not lose the momentum during this important period. We want to reinforce efforts for not only a two-state solution, but I would say a 23-state solution, because this is a question not only of two-states, Israel and Palestine, but normalisation between Israel and the entire region as well as the entire region being involved in the efforts of building a truly functioning Palestinian state. It is a two-state and a 23-state solution for political stability throughout the region and with obvious economic benefits that will be there for everyone.
The political efforts will be accelerated with the Quartet meeting that is taking place in New York in the next few days, but we need to accelerate also, I would argue, the economic efforts. Palestine is in a difficult situation. We are supporting the Palestinian authorities as much as we can, but you have to listen to the appeals of Prime Minister Salam Fayed when he says that he will run out of money and if he runs out of money that means trouble for the Palestinians and for the stability in that particular area. I would like to take this opportunity to appeal to the Arab world to be perhaps somewhat more generous in helping the Palestinians. If you look at the amount of money, it is not that much really, but if you look at the amount of money going, the European money is 2-3 times as much as the Arab money. At the Paris donor conference in December last year when we pledged for the state-building efforts in Palestine over the next few years, it was 53% the European Union and 20% the countries of the Arab League. I would like to have a more balanced European-Arab partnership in helping with Palestinian state-building in the years to come. This is obviously of importance for all of us, not only words but deeds and, indeed, money is of importance in that respect.
I am using this as an example of how Europe has played a fairly leading role in different efforts to further multilateral and international approaches to the different complicated situations that we are facing: the December 2007 big Palestinian state-building support conference; the conference that we had in May in Stockholm with the international compact for Iraq in order to mobilise broader international support for the Iraqi authorities as well as for the efforts of the United Nations in this particular respect; and also the broad international conference that we had also in Paris to support Afghanistan and the broader, more comprehensive approach to state-building and peace-building in Afghanistan. Secretary Gates yesterday I think was entirely right in saying that we need to give better support to the UN Representative Kai Eide there and his efforts to coordinate the security, the economic and political efforts that are the key to long-term stability in Afghanistan, which is obviously important to all of us.
Looking more particularly at this ‘near abroad’ here, as it were, we are keen to develop the relationships with the GCC. There have been somewhat difficult and still somewhat difficult negotiations over the free trade area. I hope that when we have the next meeting between the European Union and the GCC in April we will be able to take steps forward in that particular respect; I think it is important for both of us. As we made clear when we had our last meeting in Brussels, however, we also want to deepen the political dialogue with the GCC and when we meet in April I am quite certain that we will have reason to put the issue of our relationship with Iran and international efforts there somewhat higher up on our mutual agenda than it has been so far. We all have an interest in developing better relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran, but that must be based on resolving outstanding issues, without going into details. Confrontation and conflict should not be in the interests of anyone and certainly not in the interests of Iran.
Let me end where I started and that is with the economic and financial issues, which tend to be somewhat absent at a conference like this. We are facing at truly challenging environment in trade terms, in economic terms and in financial terms next year. More challenging than it has been for decades. This will have or could have security ramifications if we do not handle it correctly. I mentioned the financial situation in Palestine. Clearly, the economic collapse of the Palestinian authority would have security ramifications, but so would obviously the financial meltdown of Pakistan. We have been supportive of a very comprehensive and ambitious financial stabilisation package through the IMF for Pakistan and we will now try to give all the help and assistance that is necessary to Pakistan when it comes to the implement of that. Were that to fail, it would obviously aggravate all of the other issues that we have reason to be concerned with for Pakistan and for the wider region, as has been illustrated so tragically with the attack in Mumbai and also with the challenges that we are facing across the border in Afghanistan.
Therefore, there are challenging years ahead of us in terms of financial economic issues, but also in developing the comprehensive state and stability efforts that are necessary, be that in Palestine, in Iraq, in Afghanistan and the wider area or when it comes to dealing with some of the outstanding very complex issues, notably Iran. All will require an international partnership and the European Union is clearly a key part of these international efforts.
Thank you.
