REINFORCED EU-INDIA PARTNERSHIP: A FIRST AND STILL TOO SHY ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF THE STRATEGIC IMPORTANCE OF INDIA FOR THE EU

STATEMENT OF OLIVIER DUPUIS, SECRETARY OF THE RADICAL PARTY AND MEMBER OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT

Strasbourg, march 12 1999. "Today the EP adopted the Report of Anne André-Léonard for a reinforced partnership between the European Union and India. The report underlines the fact that India is one of the "rare examples of democratic Countries in the region" and that "it represents a very important factor of stability and support to the democratic development for the entire Asiatic continent." Besides, it recognises that "there exists a considerable potential for bilateral relationships at all levels between the European Union and India for Indian values of democracy, cultural pluralism and strong enterprise spirit." It is also affirmed that India should become a privileged partner of the European Union and of its member States, both by a political and economical standpoint" and "as a consequence, it invites the Union to make the deepening of its relationships with India a priority in its foreign policy and common security".

Statement of Olivier Dupuis, secretary of the Radical Party and Member of the European Parliament:

"Finally the European Parliament started to make choices between, from one side, a billion of citizens and, from the other, a billion and 200 millions of subjects or hostages of the laogai, between a free market based on the rule of law and more open to the world and an economy controlled essentially by the communist bureaucracy or by the army, between a system based on institutions democratically elected and a system based on an aristocratic communist class, between a society, which is free to express itself, to vote, produce, move and a system oppressing individuals and peoples. The European Parliament brought up for discussion again baseless Brittan's certainty and other sympathisers of red Pekinese carpets and proposed, even if in a still too shy manner, to "aim" strategically at the dictatorial, imperialistic, bureaucratic Asia of the laogai and of the farce-trials."

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