– Before the vote on Amendment 3:

  Véronique De Keyser, author. – (FR) Madam President, can I ask Mr Mauro to go into a bit more detail on the real extent of the amendment that he has just tabled, and particularly the reason why it focuses exclusively on Christians?

  Mario Mauro (PPE). – (IT) Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, I would point out that it is not my intention to say that Christians are more a minority than other minorities. The fact is, however, that at this point in the debate in Iraq, there is a proposal on the table to concentrate all the Christians into a single province. That is clearly unacceptable, because we would be forcing Christians from Kirkuk, Mosul and Baghdad to become ghettoised. In this respect, we hope to obtain a commitment from the European institutions, and subsequently we will transfer this clarification to the report by the Committee on Foreign Affairs on Iraq.