The 68th annual session of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly kicked off this Saturday in Madrid with the host delegation defending that the war in Ukraine will only end with the prosecution of the crimes that are being committed on the ground.
At a press conference, the president of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, US congressman Gerard E. Connolly, and the leader of the host delegation, Spanish deputy Zaida Cantera, affirmed that Ukraine and the support for the resistance of the government and the Ukrainian people to Russia’s “illegality” and “unjustified” military attack is at the center of this meeting.
Zaida Cantera stressed that one of the demands of the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, to sit at a negotiating table with Russia “is that war criminals pay” and ruled out that this cannot happen.
“As democracies we are going to lose a lot if the war in Ukraine does not have an end point and that end point would not be complete if the courts did not judge the atrocities we are seeing,” said Zaida Cantera, who recalled that “more have already been identified more than 400 mass graves” and “someone has to pay for it”.
In the graves there are no bodies of combatants, but “men, women and children who were not in the war and that a tyrant brought into the war and decided to assassinate them,” he said. “It is totally ruled out that these courts and this justice do not exist. Another issue is how to do it. That would be another chapter and we are not in that chapter yet, ”he said, recalling the case in the Balkans, in which“ specific courts were created to try and sentence war criminals ”.
The Spanish socialist deputy stressed that the Parliamentary Assembly of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization, a defense alliance between European and North American countries) is made up of nearly 300 parliamentarians from member states, who represent “popular sovereignty” and they reflect “the ideological amalgam”. of all allies, from the extreme left to the extreme right. But all, he guaranteed, showed unity in respect for Human Rights in Ukraine and for “the freedom and sovereignty of the Ukrainian people.”
Both the Spanish deputy and the president of the NATO parliamentary assembly also stressed that the Alliance is not only “military or weapons”, but also “humanitarian aid” and the defense of democracy. In this context, Connolly reiterated the recommendation of the parliamentary assembly to NATO itself, to create a structure within the organization that is a center “dedicated to democracy.”
NATO, he said, cannot just be a military alliance, but it is a military alliance “to defend democratic societies” and after more than 70 years of existence, the time has come to create “a structure” dedicated specifically to this objective”. that make it operational.”
The assembly’s recommendation to the Alliance was backed by 29 of the organization’s 30 member states in June, said the American, who said he was convinced that the country that had not yet done so would soon support the initiative. Connolly argued that the need to defend democracies and the pillars of the rule of law became evident with the war in Ukraine and no NATO member state should be afraid of creating a structure within the Alliance for this purpose.
This year’s session of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly ends Monday and, according to the official program, will reaffirm solidarity with Ukraine and underline the commitment to defense of the 30-nation organization, a few days after Poland, one of the Member States , was hit by a missile which, according to the American and Polish authorities, must have been launched by a Ukrainian anti-aircraft defense system.
The kyiv government, however, denies that the missile, which killed two people, was launched from Ukraine and insists that it be Russian. One of the speeches scheduled for the plenary of the 68th annual session of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, on Monday, is by the president of Ukraine, via video conference. Other issues that delegates will address include the Indo-Pacific region, strengthening the Euro-Atlantic relationship, terrorism, and the issue of migration and refugees.
The NATO Parliamentary Assembly is made up of 269 deputies from the 30 Alliance countries and another 100 members from partner states. The Portuguese delegation is made up of seven deputies: Marcos Perestrello, Joana Sá Pereira, Dora Brandão and Diogo Leão, from the PS, and Olga Silvestre, António Prôa and Adão Silva, from the PSD, being chaired by the latter.
Source: Observadora
