Please find below, for information, the text of the latest in a series of Letters from the President to the members of the Assembly.

Paris, 25 June 2003

Dear Members,

1. I was very pleased not only with the debates and results of our summer session, but also with the turnout. Many government representatives took the trouble to travel from Brussels to Strasbourg. I wish to thank the Council of Europe for the use of their hemicycle and for the valuable support provided by its Secretariat. I particularly enjoyed the joint session with the members of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament. Following Michel Barnier, Chris Patten has been the second Commissioner to address us this year and his powerful speech on Europe’s role in international affairs was among the most impressive I have heard on the subject from a EU representative for a long time.

2. On 11 June 2003, I participated in the Second Annual Conference of the New Defence Agenda in Brussels. Among the participants were the Chairman of the EU Military Committee, General Gustav Hägglund, the Ministers for Defence of Bulgaria and Romania and the Vice-Foreign Minister of the People’s Republic of China.

As a member of the third panel, I addressed the conference on how the EU should re-think its global security aims. I specifically welcomed the work now being done on a global strategy for a EU foreign and security policy, emphasizing that this strategy should provide clear and unambiguous guidance for rapid decisions and appropriate responses in future crises. I also said that if the EU is to be able to send national soldiers into military action, EU citizens want to be sure that their national parliamentarians are well informed and can express their views without being overruled by an invisible and distant European administration.

Finally, I stated that for the foreseeable future, transatlantic cooperation would remain vital for stability and security in Europe and the rest of the world. This cooperation can only flourish if the transatlantic debate continues to develop and if all the countries and institutions involved make a determined effort to deepen exchanges of views on security in the appropriate fora and encourage a wider public debate that also involves parliamentarians and the public at large on both shores of the Atlantic.

3. “Desperately seeking Europe” was the timely topic of the annual colloquy of the Deutsche Bank Forum in Berlin which I attended on 13 June 2003. Deutsche Bank Chairman Josef Ackermann wanted the conference to give an outside perspective on the EU and the challenges and opportunities it faces. The debates turned out to be focused largely on the EU’s foreign, security and defence policy. Wolfgang Ischinger, German Ambassador to the US, said that the causes of the transatlantic crisis lay deeper than just differences on the Iraq question. The international security institutions had been weakened, in direct contradiction to European policy goals. Resentment in the US vis-à-vis the UN was growing. NATO was underemployed as a transatlantic decision-making body and European partners had the impression that it was being used to implement decisions already made in Washington. The fundamental principles underlying the international order had been called into question. The old fiction that all states enjoyed sovereignty and equal rights was gradually being replaced by a policy geared to withdrawing protection for dictators and which made the use of force more likely. The new US National Security Strategy, with its ambitions of US predominance and resolve to bring about changes would transform the world. On the other side were the Europeans with their model for a slow Europeanisation of the world. It was important for the ESDP to gain the confidence of the US. Europeans should not only define goals, but also provide the operational means for achieving them. More transatlantic dialogue was urgently needed. It was necessary to formulate common “road maps” on issues such as Iran or WMD. Being a hegemonic power, the US could only be successful if it took into account the views of its partners and based its policy on legitimacy and consensus. A rules-based international order was not a trick to limit US power. The use of military power could lead to constructive results provided there was legitimacy.

Richard Perle, who was introduced by Washington Post Associate Editor and conference co-chairman David Ignatius as one of the most influential men in US foreign policy, gave his views on US and European foreign policy: The case of al-Qa’ida demonstrated that it was possible to wait too long before taking action. The United States would act if it was in its interests to do so. If others failed to recognise the urgency of such action, it would act alone. The global structure so sought after by Europeans was not enough to defend the US. The UN needed to be reformed if it was to become relevant. European policy was like chocolate: delicate and sweet but it would make you fat, not safe.

On the issue of Iran members of the audience made it clear that they had a credibility problem with both the speaker and US foreign policy: Laughter filled the room following his statement that “we have serious evidence of Iran undertaking a nuclear weapons programme”. Sergei Karaganov, Chairman of the Moscow Council on Foreign and Defence Policy, responded to Perle’s criticism of Russian contracts with Iran, explaining that Russia needed the money stemming from nuclear sales to Iran and other countries to maintain its own nuclear potential. Iran’s nuclear policy, he remarked, had both a technological and an intellectual component. Many of Iran’s nuclear engineers had been trained in Britain and France. Finally, Iran had been a constructive neighbour for Russia, particularly with respect to Chechnya. Perle immediately acknowledged that Russia had legitimate commercial interests and that “there is room for a deal between the US and Russia on Iran with the Europeans coming in”.

Perle suggested converting American unilateralism into leadership in order to allay some of the concerns about American dominance. Karaganov added that it was important for the US not only to lead, but also to convince its partners.

4. My participation, together with colleagues from the Assembly’s Presidential Committee, in the interparliamentary conference on pan-European Cooperation hosted by the CIS Parliamentary Assembly, the European Parliament and the Council of Europe on 16 June 2003 in Saint Petersburg was intended to deepen relations with the national parliaments represented in the interparliamentary body of the Commonwealth of Independent States and to build new contacts.

I had bilateral meetings with the President of the CIS Assembly, Sergey Mironov (who is also President of the Council of the Russian Federation), and the Russian Deputy Minister for International Affairs, Vladimir Chizhov, who was present throughout the whole conference. In answer to a question about the withdrawal of Russian forces from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Minister Chizhov said that Russia wished to become a fully-fledged partner in the EU’s crisis management activities. He referred in particular to the very limited Russian participation – only five officers –  in the EU police mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina. He saw potential for cooperation at both political and technological level.

The EU, he explained, had stated that it was first developing relations with a number of other partners before hammering out the interface with Russia and that there was nothing yet to discuss. He did not see things this way. Europe was a main strategic priority for Russia. Russia, he said, “is ready when you [the EU] are”. Interestingly, both Mr Mironov and Mr Chizhov used the term “expansion” when referring to EU enlargement. We explored possibilities for cooperation in a number of fields related to the ESDP, such as space, intelligence, strategic transport and missile defence.

Our members largely carried the debate on “issues of European security and combating international terrorism”. The discussions focused on such questions as the implementation of UN Security Council decisions, international terrorists and the death penalty and the democratic oversight of national intelligence agencies as a condition for their cooperation at international level.

The President of the Parliamentary Assembly of Belarus and Russia, Gennadiy Seleznev, who is also President of the Russian Duma, indicated that work was in progress with a view to creating a Union between the two states and defining the model for such a Union. He made it clear that the current situation in Kaliningrad was not satisfactory and that he hoped for better travel arrangements for the citizens of the enclave. The Russian representatives repeatedly referred to the need to avoid creating a “Schengen” wall.

With best wishes.

Yours sincerely,


Jan Dirk BLAAUW