German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 19/190,
p. 24017.
Herr President. Ladies and gentlemen.
This will obviously be a debate in which all delegations place national interests over party politics; since we are all of us agreed
that the Open Skies Treaty must be preserved, and in May have affirmed
precisely that in a common letter to the American House of Representatives. The
objections brought forward by the Americans do not nearly justify the
renunciation of the treaty. The problems can be removed. Allow me to illustrate
that by the example of Königsberg
referred to in your motion.
The basis for the Russian limitation of distance flown to
500 kilometers for observation flights over Königsberg was an observation of
the territory via Poland in the year 2014 – in conformity with the treaty, yet
excessive. Observation flights over Königsberg however continue to be possible.
In that there are also distance limitations over Denmark and Germany, we could
meet the Russians half-way and codify that in the treaty for Königsberg.
Before we lose ourselves in the details of the workings of
the treaty, we should ask ourselves why this treaty is at all needed. The
answers are: It is an important component of the European arms control architecture
which moreover in recent years has been seriously damaged and the treaty
thereby helps us to form trust between the peoples of Europe.
Let us in that regard look at the practice of recent years. Almost
all observation flights take place over Europe, only a few over the U.S.A. Why
then must we Europeans so attentively observe and precisely track one another
on account of troop movements in Germany and where the Russians station their
rockets? That is ultimately only because the artificial division of the
European continent still persists. Trenches and barbwire in eastern Ukraine are
today signs of this division which we long since believed to be overcome. I may
yet once more call to mind: At the end of the Cold War, Mikhail Gorbachev spoke
of a “common house of Europe”. François
Mitterand saw the end of the Cold War as the possibility for Europe to return
to its own history and to its own geography, just as one returns home.
In the Charter of Paris in 1990, we commonly set for
ourselves the goal to create a Europe that to be united is to be free and
secure. After three lost decades, we must confirm that we today are
unfortunately far removed from that, even further than at the fall of the Wall.
Do you still remember the positive prevailing mood of that
time? Let us please still consider how we can form our common European territory
so that treaties like that of the Open Skies soon become unnecessary. Can we
not, for example, within the OSCE work towards the preparation of a treaty on
security in Europe with Russia?
Should we not take up elements of the idea
developed in 2003 at the EU-Russia summit in Saint Petersburg of the four
common areas with Russia which, besides economy, research, culture and education, also
foresaw a cooperation in the field of external security? Can we not enable a
yearly debate on the state of security policy in the Federal Republic of
Germany so as to develop concepts for the European space?
Ladies and gentlemen, there exists a stronger and further
growing need for a global security architecture for the 21st
Century. We should therefore in common with other states work towards the
launching of a process to renew the entire architecture of global security and
to guarantee security for all states, not just the NATO states and the nuclear
powers. I have the hope that with today’s constructive debate we will go a
small but important step in the right direction.
Many thanks.
[trans: tem]
