Interview on World News and Business

Transcript of SKY NEWS Interview

12 September 2001

Well, joining us live now from Brussels is Chris Patten. He's the European Commissioner for External Relations. Mr Patten, thank you for joining us. I'm sure you will already have heard that Mr Bush has described the attack on his country as an act of war. He said that time and resolve is on his side and that "we will win", in his words. How much will Europe be standing beside the President of the United States whatever action he chooses to take?

We had an extraordinary meeting of Europe's Foreign Ministers today, and that was… that took place in the presence of Lord Robertson, the secretary-general of NATO - almost unprecedented - and I think the clear expression of view at that meeting was that we want to stand four-square with the United States, and what has happened, while it was a brutal attack on America, was actually an attack on the values that we all share: the values of decency and the values which the whole international community has to uphold, so we will be working with the United States, and I hope with other countries as well, to uphold those values and to tackle terrorism in the days and weeks and months ahead.

But given that he has described it as an act of war and he will retaliate accordingly, in your opinion should Europe be in a position where it is prepared to get involved with acts of war to support America?

CHRIS PATTEN:

Look, it would be grotesque for me to start speculating about what may or may not happen in a week or two weeks' or a month's time, but we made it absolutely clear today in Europe that the perpetrators of this wickedness have to be caught and have to be punished, and that is our very, very strong view. In order to root out international terrorism, which is, I suppose, going to be the principal threat to our standards and our prosperity in the 21^st century - not the sort of enemy you could see in the last century, a different sort of enemy. We have to find out who they are and then together, internationally, working together we have to actually root them out. We've first of all got to find the trail which will lead us to these people, and then it's not just a question of the United States having the problem of rooting out terrorism, it's a problem for all of us. We in the United Kingdom know from our own experience about how terrible terrorism can be and about what sort of resolve it takes to deal with it, and this terrorism which has, I think, changed the world in the last 24 hours, this sort of terrorism demands that we all stand shoulder to shoulder if we're to deal with it.

Well, can we look at…

[Interrupting] It's clear that all of us… go on.

I was just going to ask you, Mr Patten - sorry to interrupt you - what you feel as a nation Britain, and indeed Europe, can look ahead to now?

What we can look ahead to, and what I think that every citizen in the United Kingdom and European countries should look ahead to is not just solidarity in terms of mourning with the United States, and I think it's important that we're going to have three minutes of silence on Friday and a day of mourning, that's a good way of showing that we stand with the Americans, but we've got to stand with them practically as well, and that will mean - and I think citizens should insist on this - that we make it clear that the most important item on the agenda internationally is the fight against terrorism. It involves security, it involves preventive diplomacy, it involves political co-operation, but it will need to involve us in working together to an unprecedented degree.

What was your reaction looking at pictures… as we speak to you, Mr Patten, what was your reaction yesterday when you heard about this devastation unfolding on the eastern seaboard?

I thought… to be honest, I thought that it was one of the few days in my life which would change the world completely. I remembered the day that President Kennedy was assassinated. I remember having the same sense of everything changing then that I felt yesterday, as with others I witnessed those horrific scenes, and we all know people who were working in the World Trade Centre or who have friends of friends who were doing that. Talk to your families, talk to your friends, everybody knows young people, Europeans, Chinese, African, people from all around the world who were there because those towers of the World Trade Centre are symbols of international prosperity and pluralism, and it was our world that was being attacked, not just those physical symbols of it in New York.

The city that never sleeps is how they described it. It's in the middle of a nightmare at the moment. Do you think… do you feel that Europe is a less safe place because of what's happened in America yesterday?

I think the whole world is less safe until we can actually root out terrorists who are clearly capable of an extraordinarily sophisticated as well as an unbelievably wicked series of acts; so all of us, all of us have a stake, have an interest if we want to go on living decent, prosperous, stable lives in decent, prosperous, stable countries. All of us have to be working with the United States to deal with this terrorism in a way which is vigorous and rigorous and of course sophisticated, because it will involve a mix of instruments, it will involve on the one hand security, on the other hand the sort of preventive diplomacy which needs a great deal of guile and a great deal of long-term commitment.

Commissioner, thank you.

Thank you very much.