Eric Byrne (Dublin South Central, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Two good things happened in recent weeks. The American President has secured another four years in office, while the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, probably has got a further ten years in which to rule China. This means the two most important presidents or chairmen, who have a key role to play in international affairs, now are in place. If one takes note of the reports in this regard, it is to be hoped that America may look afresh at its embargo on Cuba. Moreover, I welcome the debate that has taken place at European Council level on looking afresh on Cuba, while noting the Cubans must abide by the human rights clauses.

I wish to discuss three individual countries and will start with Palestine. Our position on Palestine is quite clear and I fully support both the Tánaiste's position on Palestine and his work at European level in gaining observer status for the Palestinians at the United Nations. I wish to ask two specific questions of the Tánaiste. The Palestinians are a complicated group of people and do themselves no good by dragging the bodies of so-called collaborators behind motorbikes, as the television footage in this regard was quite revolting. Hamas must be told there are standards by which we wish to abide, that this is not the way and that such people also have human rights. I may not have been in Ireland when the Tánaiste responded, if at all, to the horrendous attack by Palestinians who slaughtered Egyptian troops in Sinai. Such behaviour is unacceptable. Perhaps the Tánaiste has issued statements and perhaps he is familiar with the case of the slaughter of the aforementioned border guards by Palestinians entering from Sinai. My concluding reference to Palestine is to a plan that probably already is under way to exhume the body of Yasser Arafat, who may well have been poisoned. Is the Tánaiste up to date with regard to developments in that respect?

I will turn briefly to the Congo, on which members have had a lengthy debate and note that with 5 million dead and with it being the rape region of the world, we must get our heads together collectively and do something more seriously than is the case at present. I understand that Goma has been taken over by some of the forces that probably have emanated from Rwanda. I call on the Tánaiste to consider seriously the need for the governments of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Uganda to be collectively pressurised into working towards the achievement of peace in that immediate area. It is members' understanding that the reason this particular part of the Congo is attracting so much violence is based clearly on the mineral resources therein. Moreover, it appears that to date, Rwanda in particular, with the possible involvement of Uganda, has been fomenting dissent in the Congo to access the very rich diamond and other natural resources that exist there. I will conclude my remarks on the Congo by reminding the Tánaiste that in Sierra Leone, they brought Charles Taylor to court and he was found guilty. I believe he may have received a 50-year sentence but he was found guilty on a number of other issues, which included recruiting, training and using child soldiers and second, creating soldier brides, which essentially involved kidnapping women and making them sexual subjects for soldiers. He was found guilty in respect of such practices, which are widespread in eastern Congo. The Tánaiste might use his good offices and services to bring that region more into focus.

I will conclude by referring to my pet subject, namely, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, OSCE, and election monitoring. What I find about the Ukraine and other countries in which I have been engaged in monitoring is very interesting. It is that the OSCE sends in a core team for perhaps two or three months before the actual election date, which then issues an interim report. I plead with the Tánaiste that such interim reports should not be published while well-intentioned and tremendously hard-working election workers are still working under ferocious conditions. Such workers, who may be operating in primitive conditions involving queueing and who may not have slept for 36 hours because they have been bringing ballot papers to the counting areas, then hear, having gone through an entire democratic process of voting, consolidating the votes and transporting them to the current centre, the preliminary reports from the OSCE, which invariably are relatively negative. This is because over the previous three months, the OSCE team will have examined the imbalance in media coverage and the abuse of administrative resources, usually by the incumbent government, as well as the political financing of candidates and parties. It is demoralising for those democrats when they hear that although the election and the counts have not yet been completed, the OSCE finds negatively. I have seen this happen in a number of countries and I plead that the Tánaiste use his good offices to suggest to the OSCE that it wait for at least a day or two while the polling material and boxes are returned and their contents counted, because such declarations demoralise those people who have been working so hard on the electoral front.