Parliamentary Assembly

Mr Kohl, Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany (translation)

First of all, I have again heard the word “crisis”. Actually, I do not hear about anything else but crises. I cannot understand this word. I do not believe that Europe is in crisis. I contest this view. If I really consider the historical dimension of what has happened in the past forty years, I cannot see that we are in crisis. What we need in Europe is patience. That is something completely different, it is not a crisis.

However, with the best will in the world no one can expect developments which have run counter to one another in the 300-year history of the nationstate to be turned round in one generation.

Just take a look at the history of this city in which we are today, the city of Strasbourg. Here you can see the disasters of European history just like in a picture book. And if you consider the voting patterns of the citizens of Strasbourg in the French referendum then you have an answer to your question: and it shows that people in this region have understood where their future lies, namely in Europe.

We must be careful. It is part of the spirit of the times for people to be permanently pessimistic. I see no reason to be pessimistic. Let me say something of a personal nature: on my eighteenth birthday on 3 April 1948 I needed a permit in my home town of Ludwigshafen to go from one side of the Rhine to the other, right in the middle of Germany. And then, on the other hand, I look at my children’s generation: they go right across Europe; they have thought on a European scale for a long time now.

Many things, of course, have not turned out so well, but what did we really expect? If all of us here in this Chamber who lived at that time ask ourselves for one minute whether we would have thought it possible in 1950 for us to sit here in such a gathering we shall, if we are honest, reply: no one would have thought it possible. And how long is the intervening period? It is forty years. What are forty years compared with the whole of European history? Absolutely nothing! In the tapestry of European history it is a tiny part of the weave. Those of us who fight for Europe should therefore not let the word “crisis” pass our lips.

Secondly, I believe it is a very German discussion – after all we make everything into a philosophy – when we speak of “two speeds”. I must say – and perhaps in your eyes I am not a real German for this reason – I am quite pragmatic about this. I want the train to move ahead, as fast as possible, let me take that quite clear. When the Swiss now say – a Swiss colleague has addressed this issue – that they are not yet with us, then you must be familiar with Swiss history and a lot else besides. However, I am quite certain (to reply to our Swiss colleague) that they will vote “Yes” in the third ballot. Let me tell you why: because the people in Switzerland will be doing their sums during the third ballot. The Swiss are good at sums. Then they will see that being in the economic and monetary union is good for the franc. And then you will vote “Yes”.

I am not being ironic when I say this to you: I say it respectfully. I wish the Germans had been able to do their sums in the course of history; we would have been better off. I am not saying this with any sort of hidden meaning.

Let us take the Twelve. People say one or two may not go along with the rest. I do not believe this. I believe the Treaty of Maastricht will be ratified by all twelve countries. However, in the event that one of them does not join in, the law must stipulate that it is not the slowest ship which determines the speed of the whole convoy. However, they will all inevitably come along. Our Norwegian colleagues present here today will sometimes say: if only we had taken that step at the time we would not have all this bother and would have got further than we are. Believe me, the train of history is on course for the unification of Europe, whether people believe it or not.

I do, of course, know that chanceries everywhere still have all the old documents, and it is of course difficult to admit now that in 1919 when the then Yugoslavia was established things may have been overlooked in St Germain and Trianon which cannot be overlooked today, and this is a problem which arises for our generation. Nevertheless, we must face this issue.

Europe is an independent unit. However, this unit is not directed against the United States of America. I have always said that for German policies this is not a question of “either/or” but of “both/and”. I am a passionate supporter of the Atlantic Alliance, but that does not alter the fact that we must move forward in Germany and in Europe.

The German-French Corps, which I helped establish, is not conceived as being anti anything. I think that this year two, or perhaps three, European countries will join. This Corps is not directed against anyone. However – and we discussed this when François Mitterand was in Bonn recently – it is a fantastic idea for young Germans to be able to do their military service in a French unit and Young Frenchmen in a German unit. Just think what the implications of this are. Nevertheless, they still remain Germans and Frenchmen. We must eventually come to think as these young people think, and they will be walking a different road in the twenty-first century.

As far as Vienna is concerned, I can only say that I am for everything which brings us further along the road to European integration. I am especially in favour of a message being sent out from Vienna to those countries which are finding their way to democracy that they are not just being supported by words but also by deeds. The Russians, Ukrainians and others hear expressions of support every day. When, for example, it is a question of warding off the enormous danger presented by their atomic power stations, which do not meet modem safety standards, we have to realise the consequences for the millions of people who could be affected. People there expect help from us, not just documents which we ceremoniously sign.

If Vienna is a place of work during this conference, if really tangible decisions are taken, then I am all for it; that will be a good thing. And I think there is a good chance this will be the case.

Mr Kohl, Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany (translation)

I turn first of all to the question of a federal structure. I am convinced federalist, but I am not here now to give advice to others. Each European country has a different tradition and a different history. The most stupid thing said in recent German history was “The German character will cure the ills of the world”. Please forget that utterance, it no longer exists. We have our experience in our country, you have yours, but I think that federalism most closely meets the aspirations of people in our time. The nature of subsidiarity is, after all, that decisions should best be taken in places close to the grassroots, where the citizen can be reached, and not in some remote central organisation.

It is remarkable that all the big centralised states in the world are currently undergoing such a process of fédéralisation. However, let there be no doubt: federalism is not separatism, it is something completely different. Federalism means respecting the given situation in a country, and the given situation in Germany is such that the way the Bavarians see themselves is different to that of many people in north Germany, Berlin or elsewhere.

I come from a neighbouring region, from Rhineland-Palatinate. The Palatinate has always been my home, Germany is my fatherland, and Europe is my future. This is the way T should like to define it.

If I have understood you correctly, you mean by your question that people live, for example, in a Spanish region and no longer need the Spanish state. This is, of course, not my idea of federalism, I wish to make that quite plain. I did not choose my trio without good reason.

For me subsidiarity means that people’s understanding of democracy – more than that, the deep feeling many people have, especially the younger generation – is that they know that this state is a necessity, they know what rights and obligations society expects and demands. But they do not want this decreed, they want to be able to understand it. There is a big difference. The old-style authoritarian state is dead, even though there are many bureaucrats sitting in their offices who still do not believe it. In the eyes of our young people it has been dead a long time. This is also a piece of living democracy and a message which the Council of Europe, for example, could send out to the newly emerging democracies which are laboriously making their way into the future but cannot learn democracy overnight – like Russia, which had no democracy between 1917 and 1990 (and no one, with the best will in the world, can say that the country was a flourishing democracy before 1917). We must not forget that.

To put this in concrete terms, the word subsidiarity must be translated into action. I am a convinced supporter of local self-government. I believe that in Europe it will have a tremendous effect if the lowest level of government, namely that of the municipalities, is strengthened. The second level I would mention is what we call Lander and what others term regions. They must also intensify their work with one another.

Let me give you an example from my home country, Germany: Franco-German friendship – something was said earlier about inter-governmental relations – has certainly been promoted most through twinnings between municipalities. In Germany there are over 3 000 municipalities – from large cities to small villages – which have a partner in France. So it is not just François Mitterand and Helmut Kohl, and not just Adenauer and de Gaulle, who meet. That is one thing – if they harmonise well with one another this is not necessarily a drawback – but the decisive factor is that the mayors, councillors, sports clubs and schools get together.

We are trying at the moment, with some difficulty, to develop relations with Poland. The important thing is that people should come together, not only officials, although it does no harm when French and German municipal councillors get together and both curse Bonn and Paris. They have something European in common. The list could be extended at will.

On the subject of Malta I have no objections. I have always supported its membership.

Mr Kohl, Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany (translation)

As I have just said, and will repeat: if one looks at the period available to Russia for democratic development during this century, one sees that the problems which we, for example, have in the new German Lander are puny compared with the problems facing Russia. For this reason I find a large proportion of western expectations quite simply crazy. What did people expect? That the communist party would disappear overnight and a blossoming country with democracy and all its trappings would result? Anyone who is honest with himself should look at the history of his own country and see how long it took to reach the standard which is taken for granted here in the Council of Europe. If you bear this in mind there is, I believe, no reason at all to say the Russians will not manage it.

Russia is a huge country, the Russians are a great people. They are a people with their own dynamism, an almost mystical dynamism, with a culture which is one of the world’s advanced cultures. The people there must now sort themselves out. What they need from us is not intellectual tutelage but real help – material aid – and that is necessarily limited. It can only be help to enable them to help themselves. It is pointless to support things there which have become meaningless and untenable.

We must help them to help themselves. There must be help on the intellectual level, for example training in economics, and much more besides. I think we could do a lot more in Europe with little money.

We all have universities at home. If every university in the countries represented here which is at all able to do so decided to create a real partnership with universities in Russia or the Ukraine, that is to say the CIS states, that would not cost much money. If that were to happen, young people studying somewhere or other, be it in St Petersburg, Moscow, Kiev, Novosibirsk or elsewhere, would see that they are part of the same world, that people like them, are not afraid of them any more, are receptive to inquiries. A lot more could be done here.

One thing can be done by the Council of Europe: when Russia knocks on the door here and says: “We want to join”, then the answer should be “Yes”, but on one condition, namely that the high standards set by the Council of Europe are adhered to, so that a show of special goodwill does not lead to a lower standard. That would be quite the wrong policy. If the demands made here correspond to the standard required, that offers a man like Boris Yeltsin the best chance of moving things forward at home. A parliament must be a real parliament. That is one of the conditions. There must be a truly independent judiciary – and a lot more besides.

Now the next question. I hear this again and again. You know, it is difficult to give an answer. For me, German unification does not pose a threat to anyone. On the contrary, I have actually always believed that if the Germans are doing their own housework, from the point of view of those people who are afraid they are occupied with something. Actually, everyone should be content that the Germans are occupied at home. Looking at it from this aspect I cannot see any danger.

We do, of course, have problems at the moment, because we are fully affected by the dramatic consequences of the collapse of the economy, which has happened in parallel to the collapse of the economy in the former Soviet Union. But you can rest assured that really flourishing regions will emerge. It will take a few years longer than I, or indeed others, believed but the German economy can manage. The problem for us is not being unable to manage, but whether we realise that with German unification and the disappearance of the East-West conflict we have entered a new dimension as far as our thinking is concerned, that we cannot say in the old Lander that we shall just carry on as before and that all that has nothing to do with us. Rather, we must say that we can continue to live very well but perhaps not have a growth rate of so and so many per cent every year, we must realise that we can bake small cakes for a few years which taste very good, but not bigger cakes every year.

Moreover, if the Germans do not overcome the economic and social problems posed by German unification, then all of you sitting here will despair of the Germans. Then you will say they are not the Germans they used to be. That alone – and I also say this to my fellow-Germans – is an argument for us to come to our senses and say: We must cut out coat according to our cloth.

It is true – as far as the Third World is concerned – that we cannot, of course, do everything at the same time. We discussed this at the conference in Rio last year. Only I must say that there is a trend at the United Nations at the moment which I do not accept: people talk about the Third World, but the misery of the inhabitants of central and eastern Europe goes unremarked. Of course the countries affected in Africa, Latin America and Asia are our special responsibility, but I cannot ignore the fact that the people in central and south-eastern Europe, some of them suffering from worse economic circumstances, are not taken into account because their countries do not count as part of the Third World in the traditional sense. If someone says to me: “You do too little for the Third World”, then I must say to him: “All right, you add up the sums we are providing to ensure stability in central and south-eastern Europe and add on the money given to the Third World!”

Moreover, some people in the Third World – I am thinking, for example, of certain heads of state and government in North Africa who visit me – must realise that they will have to change their way of thinking. When one of them says I should give him three Leopard tanks, that is not what I understand by aid to the Third World. It is time we thought about what happens to this money, and that has nothing to do with our telling them what to do. This also has to be said, because it is taxpayers’ money. The citizens have given it to us and we have to account for it.

Mr Kohl, Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany (translation)

I wish first of all to say something on the last question. If you look at the map of Europe and the number of people living there who speak German as their mother tongue or otherwise, then our wish is, I think, not unreasonable. I have absolutely nothing against other languages. I must say to you quite openly that when I consider all the things we spend money on in Europe I find the financial argument rather strange. Just think of all the things we have financed in Europe in the last forty years, and here I am speaking of every conceivable field. So I think the financial argument concerning translation and everything connected with it is unconvincing.

I have here, of course, not spoken about economic issues because that was not my main subject. I have no problems in this respect.

I must say to you that I do not produce arguments for the benefit of British newspapers, I do not produce arguments for the benefit of any newspapers. If I were to side with some of the German newspapers I should not be sitting here but would have ceased being Chancellor long ago, I should have disappeared long ago, ladies and gentlemen. I therefore try to organise my arguments somewhat differently.

I do not believe that there is much point in apportioning blame in this way. I should like to say to our British colleagues: If I am not mistaken German unification was in 1990, but I cannot remember the British economy being in a brilliant state in 1980. There is no point blaming the Germans for everything. That is an old and popular game. I could counter-attack but I do not wish to do so.

For Europeans – including the Germans – German unification was big business in the first two years. If you take the figures for exports to Germany – your President from Spain could give the figure – exports from Spain in 1990 soared by 41 % due to German unification, which was quite a normal thing.

Of course we have problems, but I must first of all make clear the principles involved. We have an independent Bundesbank, though many people in Europe still do not believe that. And I am firmly in favour of the Bundesbank remaining independent, even though on some days when I am sitting alone at my desk I think it would be quite useful if I could just turn the screw a little. But that would be wrong. I am firmly convinced that it is very important for us in the coming monetary union also to have a European central bank committed only to currency stability.

We have to consider two points. We must do everything to get the world economy going again, and, completely independently of the developments in central Europe, there are for the first time brighter prospects for the American economy. The American economy was declining and that had nothing at all to do with German unification. So those arguments are incorrect, as is evident simply from looking at the calendar.

Our objective in Germany must be – and this is our responsibility because the mark is, whether we like it or not, a leading currency – that we do our housework as quickly as possible, as a prerequisite for lowering interest rates. We are engaged in this difficult process, and all the criticism of me that you can read in the newspapers at the moment has precisely to do with this.

In the past two years we have had excessive wage and salary increases in the public sector and elsewhere. We are in the process of saving many, many billions in the national budget, in other words we are bringing expenditure down. In principle, all the other countries in Europe are doing the same. We must now, in the coming weeks and months – I deliberately speak of weeks because the actual decisions will be taken in the next three weeks, four at most – we must react to overall developments by taking drastic measures to create the prerequisites for cuts in interest rates, and we are in the middle of this process at the moment.

When you speak about interest rates please remember that interest rates on investments, that is long-term rates, are not particularly high, so for many people this argument is just an excuse. You have to take a close look at things to see this point in the proper light.

Because it has been mentioned, and because I consider it very important, I wish to say that I am convinced that we urgently need the European exchange rate mechanism, but as a preliminary step: monetary union must be our actual objective, and it is the most important prerequisite for countering the turbulence on the currency markets caused by international speculation which we have experienced in the past few weeks and months. We shall not escape from this situation unless we achieve monetary union as quickly as we can, one condition for this being the convergence of our economic policies.

I cannot give simple reasons for what I am saying, but I should like to say it out loud here, so that it will be heard in Europe: from much of what I have seen and heard in the last few months as far as turbulence on the currency markets is concerned, it is my impression that there are perhaps forces at work causing this turbulence in order, among other things, to prevent monetary union coming about at all. That is my impression – and not only mine – and it is based on a large number of indicators. I conclude from this that we must make progress as fast as possible.

So, let me say two things. Firstly, you can assume that both I and the government I lead will do our utmost at the political level in Germany to ensure, by means of a stringent budgetary and economy policy, that the inflation rate is brought down as swiftly as possible, because inflation always hits the broad mass of people on low incomes.

Secondly, we shall do everything to create the conditions for the necessary decisions on interest rates to be taken. I also believe that the ideas we are currently discussing within the EC will be effective.

Mr Kohl, Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany (translation)

I simply do not understand the last question. I do not know who is going to cause you trouble if you serve the cause of German-Turkish friendship. A few fundamental remarks on the question of relations between Germany and Turkey. The Germans and the Turks are linked together by very old, very close and very amicable ties of friendship. In the course of history there are few countries with which the Germans have had such an uninterrupted relationship lasting hundreds of years. Consequently we have viewed with particular horror what has happened to some Turkish citizens – for reasons of xenophobia and radicalism and all that goes with them. However, that is not typical, I must repeat that.

There are over two million Turks living in our country. In my home town of Ludwigshafen, which has 150 000 inhabitants, there are about 20 000 non-Germans, of whom between 6 500 and 7 000 are Turks. They have lived among us for many years, without any real problems – not with the Germans an any rate. They live their own lives. Moreover, the value of goods and services produced by the town would be inconceivable without the work done by these Turks. We brought them here, it was not their own idea. That is not the problem. People muddle everything up, including, for example, the question of asylum. I shall come to that problem directly.

Of course new problems arise every day. let me give you a concrete example from my home town. There are Turkish married couples who have lived for twenty or thirty years there. Their children have grown up in my home town. They live, as it were, between two cultures, and often fall between two stools. They have German boyfriends or girlfriends. And when something happens that affects the tradition of the family, because this is a family from Anatolia – and the case caused quite a stir in Germany – when a 16-year-old girl is married off by her father and she says “No, I won’t do it”, and when the entire school supports the girl, that has nothing to do with German-Turkish enmity but with the clash of two cultures which is extremely hard for just a child to cope with. That is a fact, and of course it has tremendous consequences.

Basically I just want to say that we shall have to amend the immigration legislation for those who were bom in Germany and want to stay there, those who acquire German citizenship in this way. Secondly, we must realise that some of our fellow citizens from Turkey do not want to live any differently from the way they do now.

Let me say something else: if you go to a big German city you will see that ten or twelve mosques are operating there, to use the current word. I once asked a Turkish friend: “What would you say if twelve Catholic monasteries were to be opened up in Anatolia?” You simply have to realise that this is not political malice but cultural differences colliding with one another in a very dramatic way.

Nevertheless, Turkey is one of the most important countries in Europe and within the European sphere of influence, and my policy is absolutely clear: to reach solutions to enable us to have proper dealings with one another in the future as well.

I shall say it again: especially in my own home town and the surrounding area it is inconceivable that hostility should develop towards the Turks or that we should want to send the Turks home. If we did we would have to realise at the same time that with our short working week, working month, working year and working life we could no longer earn the gross domestic product we have now.

I now come to the subject of asylum-seekers. This is quite a different issue, and it is a bad thing that the subject of guest workers in Germany, and internationally, is confused with the issue of asylum. Ladies and gentlemen, last year we had 450 000 asylum-seekers in Germany who had come for economic reasons. Let each one of you sitting here now calculate how many, after making due allowance for the size of the population, there would be in his or her own country. And please consider how much in social benefits the German state pays to each of these asylum-seekers. What would people’s reaction in your country be, I should like to ask. That is the question you must ask yourselves.

The difficulty we have is that the problems of the world cannot be resolved in Germany. I have a lot of understanding for people somewhere or other in the world who see no future prospects at home and suddenly face the possibility of coming to Germany. In fact they do not want to go to Germany per se, but to where they will find the German mark. This is the reality of the matter. And they want a different life with better social benefits. But this cannot be done when more and more people come to Germany. When – as has happened – a Jumbo lands in Frankfurt from Sri Lanka and the people who get off are simply not seeking asylum on racial, political or religious grounds but come for understandable economic reasons, we cannot solve their problems in Germany.

Incidentally, we cannot solve them in Europe either, let this be clear. We therefore need, for elementary reasons, a common European policy on asylum. It should not be thought that these problems can be solved in a different way in Vienna than in Frankfurt or in Frankfurt in a different way than in Rome. This is how things are, the more stable Europe again becomes economically, when we have overcome the present recession, the greater will be the pressure on us from people living in all the poor countries in the world.

I should like to make one thing absolutely clear: when our constitution, the Basic Law, was written in 1948, the men and women – and they were wonderful people – who had experienced die nazi period, who had come out of the concentration camps and the prisons, included in it the right to asylum on political, racial or religious grounds – the only constitution in the world to have this provision. No one wants to change that. We have never had a problem with people seeking asylum on political grounds. The problem comes from the enormous rise in applications in the meantime.

You must know – but very few people do know this – that parallel to the asylum-seekers we have hundreds of thousands of Germans and people of German extraction, for example from Romania and Russia, who came at the same time. Over two million people of German extraction live in Russia, and they are seizing this opportunity to say they would like to return. So we must solve the problem sensibly together.

I now come to the subject of Poland. I did not understand why Poles are supposed to be having difficulties in Germany. We have areas in the Ruhr where Polish workers live who immigrated eighty or ninety years ago, around the turn of the century. One of die most famous German football clubs, Schalke 04, distinguished itself for many years because of players with Polish names. And here, in the middle of Germany, the Catholic Church made it an unwritten precondition then, all those years ago, that when young priests were ordained they should be able to speak Polish, so that they could be able to hear confessions and do spiritual welfare and pastoral work in Polish. I really cannot see that we have problems here.

We have a complicated history in our relations with Poland. What we have managed to achieve with France we must also achieve with Poland, but it will take time. I can only repeat that I passionately support efforts for more peace, friendship and partnership with Poland. Accordingly we also want to boost considerably our economic relations with Poland, which is not so simple because many people in Poland will then say – and I can at least respect this argument, although I cannot accept it because it is absolutely wrong – that this is the beginning of the Germanisation of the Polish economy.

As you see, whatever we do someone expresses reservations, and we must live with this. However, we succeeded with France and we shall succeed with Poland.

However, I must also tell you what we cannot do: we cannot throw the German labour-market wide open. We have our own problems at the moment. We now have a common employment market in the European Community, and it is therefore not possible to open up our borders, as it were, to countries outside the Community. We do, however, have a fixed quota for Poland, and if you go to large building sites in Germany today you will find many where more Polish is spoken than German. Incidentally, that is also a problem the Germans have: the fact that too few of them work on building sites, but that is a different subject.

Mr Kohl, Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany (translation)

Mr President, the last group of questions relates to issues to which much cleverer people in Europe have had to apply their minds every day for months, and you expect a ready-made answer in eight minutes. I cannot, of course, do that: I surrender at once. I can only express certain views.

I would say to our colleague from Cyprus that, if you ask me, this is the most absurd anachronism I know – that we in the middle of Europe cannot resolve the Cyprus problem. I tell you now how I feel about this, as I have done on many other occasions: with a little good will from both of the main parties concerned it really ought, in my opinion, to be possible to resolve it, because it is high time that this anachronism was brought to an end. Perhaps it will be possible in the time we have at our disposal to make a little progress with the two countries directly concerned, and of course with the people in Cyprus who are affected.

I do not believe that we shall have lasting peace in Europe if we are not capable of finding solutions in those areas which have waited for a decision far too long, if we are unable to sit down together and bring about a solution. I have no easy answer to offer you here, but I have pointed out in many discussions with those responsible that this is a wound which should have healed long ago. It is something that is long overdue.

As far as arms exports are concerned, we have a strict ban on arms exports to the territory of the former Yugoslavia. We have stringent laws. When companies are found infringing them, they are prosecuted accordingly. I do not believe that it would be sensible for us to act differently.

As regards the opinion expressed by our colleague Mr Kdnig, from Austria, I cannot promise this, but if there is to be any point in the Vienna Conference it would of course be helpful to do what you ask in your question. I shall look into the matter. Since such a conference is being held I see us morally called upon here to issue a special declaration, a solemn declaration as it were, on the issue of minorities. This goes beyond the actual text itself. It will have an important psychological effect.

Consider the borders throughout the whole of Europe. We shall not reach a peaceful solution by continually trying to draw new borders. All these borders will create new injustices. I do not claim that the old borders are always just, but new borders immediately create new injustices. And how do you expect ultimately this to achieve an arrangement based on reason and compromise?

To my mind, what we are now seeing in Bosnia-Herzegovina – a question has been asked about ethnic cleansing – is the most abominable thing that has happened in the world for a long time. I am thinking in particular about the fate of the women involved. I believe we should all do much more by way of humanitarian aid wherever we can help the women concerned – and I am also addressing my fellow Germans here. Even if we cannot prevent the terrible killing and shooting from continuing, I do believe that all Europeans – and this is also my position in the EC – could do more in the way of humanitarian aid, for example concrete on-the-spot assistance for refugees.

We should not support the tendency to take these refugees and expellees to remote parts of the world and thus play into the hands of those who drive them away. Instead, we should keep them in the vicinity in reasonable decent conditions so that they can later return to their homes. Otherwise the aim of these brutal policies will have been achieved, if these people are expelled and then given no chance to go back.

I believe we must also work together here. We cannot say it is the responsibility of the United Nations, the EC or the Americans. We have had a new American administration for a few days now. The American Secretary of State Vance has stated in the recent few days that the administration is currently working on a policy for the territory of former Yugoslavia. We are involved in this process. We are trying to give advice and support.

From my point of view the most important thing we must now try to do is to arrange for the shooting to stop as quickly as possible. That in itself does not mean peace, far from it, but we must first of all bring these acts of barbarism to an end, get the camps opened up and get people around the world talking about this issue. We cannot close our eyes to the terrible things people there are going through.

However, we also know that those whose advice is to resolve the problem by means of a massive land war will in the end resolve nothing. The awful thing about this whole business is that our hands are tied. I personally believe that those who really wield the power are still not feeling the full impact of international obloquy. If they did feel it one or other of them would certainly be prepared to listen to reason.

I should like to say here once again on behalf of the Federal Republic of Germany that where we can do something, especially in the area of humanitarian aid – this also has to do with domestic considerations – we want to do everything humanly possible.

Mr President, my final remark concerns something you said in your words of introduction – I forgot to mention this earlier. I am one of those people in Germany, and I strive passionately to put this message across, who say to our fellow Germans that, now that we have been given the present of reunification, we cannot run for cover when the storms of history come down upon us. We are a country of 80 million people. We have achieved reunification with the help of all our neighbours and partners. Many people, especially our friends in the west, helped preserve peace and freedom in the old Federal Republic for forty years. For long enough we had the excuse that we could not participate because we were a divided country. We are a member of the United Nations, and where there are rights there are also obligations. I consider it an affront to the dignity of our country if, as a full member of the United Nations, we do not now also assume the full responsibilities that fall to a country like Germany. The world expects this. Anything else would be a disgrace for our country.