Address by Lord Russell-Johnston, outgoing President of the Parliamentary Assembly

The report is before you. It is detailed and clear. I will happily do my best to respond to questions on it but I want to use the eight minutes I have to say something about my conclusions after three years as your President.

They have been for me remarkable years and I am deeply grateful to all who helped me. I have visited all 43 member states, all but one of the observer states and also Bosnia and Herzegovina, Yugoslavia, China and Kazakhstan.

I hope I have spread a little light; put arguments for good things; for restraint and tolerance in situations of emotional intensity; for the resolute rejection of the oppressive.

I am concerned that some reactions to the terrible events of 11 September may have negative effects on human rights. There are a lot of people in the world who would like nothing better than to push other people around. We must never forget that the purpose of law must not be to facilitate this but to make it ever more difficult.

Looking back over the past three, troubled and sometimes violent and cruel years, my clear conclusion is that the Assembly provides its parliamentarians with a unique opportunity to change the approach of governments in their response to injustice; to evolve a settled, acceptably fair approach to the resolution of conflict, and to not only evolve clear common value positions, where double standards cannot be alleged, but to be engaged in their application.

Some may say that this is impossibly idealistic. To that, I would respond by saying, first, that without idealism and those who dream of the creation of a better world than we have, where there is goodwill and a wish for social cohesion, these things will not happen. Greed and ambition are powerful forces in the human character and often find release within nationalism and religion.

Secondly, there will also be those who say that an indirectly elected Assembly, without any specific responsibilities, is a body which is quite inappropriate to provide moral leadership. I take quite the opposite position. I believe that those who in 1949 - and these were governments! - established the Council of Europe and created the Assembly within it, understood that they were establishing a means whereby realpolitik could be democratically and internationally challenged. That was certainly the position of my distinguished Belgian predecessor, Paul Henri Spaak. And it was an action of political genius!

Over the years, the Council of Europe always - let us say this directly - at the behest of its Assembly - has initiated enormous advances in the way we conduct our affairs and in the protection and extension of human rights. The Court is the outstanding example but there are many others.

My time in the office has been dominated by events in Chechnya, in Kosovo, in Armenia and Azerbaijan, in Serbia and Montenegro, in Bosnia, and in recent months, by the terrorist attacks in the United States and their implications throughout the world.

There is one common feature in all these situations - in each and every case, the international community's initial reaction was one of realpolitik, action, or better the lack of it, based on the narrowly-defined and often short-sighted interests of key players on the world stage. In some cases, such an attitude lasted for decades, in others it still persists. There are a few cases such as Kosovo, Bosnia or East Timor in which oppression and violence reached such horrendous proportions, and were transmitted, daily, to our living rooms, that our governments had to react, no longer with platitudes but with resolute action, no longer in pursuance of selfish interests, but in pursuance of justice and peace and humanity.

Realpolitik tends to hide problems, minimize them, postpone their solution. In the long term, its tolerance of persisting injustice exacerbates frustration, and frustration, in turn, gives birth to more hate and violence. Even worse, it creates opportunities for fanatics, allowing them to hijack legitimate grievances and use them as a pretext to commit the most horrible acts of terror. Realpolitik does not solve problems, it makes them worse.

If we want real peace, "peace in our time but also peace in all times", we must base our attitudes on values. Not when it is already too late, not when blood has been spilled and houses burned, but at the time and every time. We need moralpolitik not realpolitik.

If there is one single message that has guided me through the last three years this was it. I hope I made some difference.