German Bundestag,
Plenarprotokoll 20/6, pp. 270-271.
Herr
President. Ladies and gentlemen.
First I want
to reprove that, as matters stand, the Foreign Minister is not at the first
foreign policy debate.
Filiz Polat (Greens): One moment!
We have heard no apology.
Filiz Polat (Greens): She is in Paris!
Where is the Foreign Minister?
Filiz Polat (Greens): In Paris. That you know quite precisely!
Peter Beyer (CDU/CSU): Simply for once remove the blinkers!
Then there
needs be an official apology.
Marianne Schieder (SPD): To you or to whom?
Ladies and
gentlemen, let us come to the theme. Yes, it is unpleasant [ungemütlich], what there takes place on
the border between the Ukraine and Russia; less because an incursion of the Russians
needs be feared than much more because such situations can get out of control.
It is therefore good and right when the Federal government with our allies uses
their diplomatic opportunities so to relax conditions. It is less good and
right to find fault in this development always only on one side.
Foreign
policy, ladies and gentlemen, and diplomacy should proceed from the realities.
And reality is again now that Russia perceives the order on its borders as
unsatisfactory. I do not want to here resuscitate the old quarrel as to whether
there was in the scope of the re-unification negotiations an oral pledge not to
expand NATO beyond the former DDR – as Herr Teltschik said – so much to the CDU colleagues. That is
history.
Alexander Lambsdorff (FDP): All of it disproved!
Yet the present is that Russia has always drawn a red line there where it has to do with the old Russian settlement area. The Ukraine and White Russia are plainly not to be compared with Poland and Hungary and also plainly not with the Baltic States annexed in the context of the Hitler-Stalin pact. To that extent, we are plainly not dealing with an ordering of the peace accepted by all sides – despite the treaties of 1994.
Volker Ulrich (CDU/CSU): That is historical amnesia!
Johann David Wadephul (CDU/CSU): Do you know the Treaty of Paris?
Yes, ladies
and gentlemen, I know the West’s counter-argument, there are no more spheres of
influence and these countries are free to choose their alliances. This argument
may be correct international law.
Jürgen Hardt (CDU/CSU): Ja!
Politically, it is unsustainable.
Johann David Wadephul (CDU/CSU): Kremlin propaganda!
For the
Americans also in 1961 in the Cuba crisis with complete right had insisted that
mid-range rockets in their backyard were not acceptable for the peace of the world.
And Cuba’s sovereignty then needed to stand down behind a great power’s sphere
of influence, dear friends; and that should primarily the colleagues of the CDU
write behind the ears.
Johann David Wadephul (CDU/CSU): So far, it’s still to come.
Besides: That
on the other side is exactly as for Finland, the neutrality of which was and is
not entirely voluntary.
There are now
again historical-political circumstances which, without legal obligation, restrict
a state’s freedom of action. Therefore, it is not prudent [klug] to insist on something which will be regarded by Russia as an
unacceptable provocation: The ever stronger involvement of the Ukraine, yet
also of Georgia, with Western security structures. And even if it is difficult
for the rules-based multi-lateralists: The security and independence of the Ukraine
is better served with a neutrality accepted by Russia than with weapons deliveries
or a membership in NATO, ladies and gentlemen.
Peter Beyer (CDU/CSU): I think they should decide that themselves.
So long as
Russia lugs around the phantom woes of a shattered empire should the West keep
this in mind in regards its reactions and disclaim any further expansion of its
order against the Russian border. Since not, ladies and gentlemen, foremost
international law but before all political prudence secures the peaceful living together of peoples and states. Ladies and gentlemen, certainly we Germans might
have a duty to also make this clear to the Ukraine.
I am grateful.
Marianne Schieder (SPD): Ojeojeoje!
[trans: tem]
