2008 ORDINARY SESSION

________________________

(Fourth part)

REPORT

Thirty-third Sitting

Wednesday 1 October 2008 at 3 p.m.

Mr HERKEL (Estonia). – I have followed the discussions today and yesterday. When members of the ad hoc committee had the floor, only one of them, Mr Islami, spoke about the strong violation of international law by the Russian Federation. That was repeated today by some of our colleagues. Mr Islami and Corien Jonker spoke about the ethnic cleansing of Georgian villages in South Ossetia. However, if we are speaking about military aggression against a sovereign state, then yes, we may use a strong word – “war”. However, it is not so exact. Sometimes we speak about the disproportionate use of force. If we are weak in our words, we are also weak in our conclusions. This report represents a dilemma as to whether we use the exact words and strong conclusions or we are weak as we are usually.

We are here in the Parliamentary Assembly, with very different people from different countries with different backgrounds, and even sometimes with different perceptions of history. My good colleague, Mr Gross – we have worked together for a long time – will probably tell me that representatives of the Baltic states are too critical of Russia because of the tragedies of history, but the tragedies of history are coming back. We have already seen it in Chechnya and we did not use strong means; now we see it in Georgia.

      In Georgia, not only military but civilian targets and infrastructure were bombed. The attack has parallels in Czechoslovakia in ’68 and even in ’38. Those events, too, took place under the pretext of protecting citizens. Today and tomorrow, we have the opportunity to say strongly that we do not accept such behaviour. Thank you.