Strasburg, 16 september 1998

Dupuis (ARE). "Madam President, Mr Commissioner, I think you have heard and felt the indignation. Something really incredible happened. After Croatia, after Bosnia, here is the same scenario, exactly the same scenario unfolding: a policy of aggression, something completely different from a police operation, has created 250,000 refugees. Here, we are in front of the third phase of a war commenced in Croatia by Mr Milosevic some eight years ago. A war that he planned, that his is in the process of organising and prosecuting step by step, and will see through to the end, so that 50 or 60% of Kosovo is cleansed of all Albanian presence, so that he can then come before you, before the Council, and say: »I am a man of peace. Let us conclude an agreement as in Bosnia, with a nice little partition that will not be called as such at the outset, but which will be a de facto partition with a de facto ethnic cleansing of Kosovo . This is not a plan for tomorrow, but one being implemented day after day. 250,000 refugees,

Madam President, Mr van den Broek, reason enough to intervene by other means than sending fact-finding missions and »plastic surgery operations as we have had for years. We must get to the core of the matter. And the core of the problem is Mr Milosevic, who will have to answer directly before the Court in the Hague for the crimes he has perpetrated for eight years in Croatia, Bosnia and now in Kosovo. There is not a single minute to lose. We do not need to send in tanks. We do not to send warplanes. All we have to do is send a summons to appear before the Court in The Hague and that can be done tomorrow so that we can be done with this character. A character who has caused the death of 200,000 persons and bears responsibility for two million refugees. There are already 250,000 refugees in Kosovo. Of course, we can go on talking about the CFSP, decisions to be taken majority, European corps to send, but it takes two months to draw up the first feasibility plans. We must move on to other things than the Ams

terdam Treaty which is showing what it really is total void. We must act, we must create a Europe other than the Europe of impotence we have known these last ten years. It is not only the MPs present here to day who have had it, but also the citizens who no longer believe in it. The citizens ! And then we are surprised that they vote this way or that. They will no longer vote, because they will not have any confidence in this Europe.

(Applause)