Nickolay Mladenov: The Council of Europe Must Initiate the Help for Establishing the Primacy of Law in the Middle East
22 June 2011 News
My main message today is: let’s convince our partners and friends in the Middle East that they are not alone in their pursuit of constructing responsible institutions that abide in their work by the primacy of law. Because who, if not the Council of Europe, can help execute the necessary constitutional changes that follow the highest standards, guarantee the establishment of multinational societies and support basic rights and freedoms. With these words foreign minister Nickolay Mladenov addressed the deputies of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.
Mladenov outlined the experience of Bulgaria in the centuries-old cohabitance of Christians, Muslims and Jews, of Bulgarians, Armenians, Turks and Roma – a cohabitance, by no means, unitary. Exactly our history helped us to avoid political capitalization based on these ethnic and religious differences and the bloody conflicts of the Western Balkans that took place during the 1990s, reminded Mladenov.
He called on the Council to initiate a process for building tolerant multinational societies in the Middle East in order to avoid a “clash of civilizations”. This effort must acquire the strongest possible political support, hence the foreign minister asked for a high-level meeting under the aegis of the Council.
A video of the speech can be found here.