Verbatim report of proceedings

Tuesday, 5 September 2000 - Strasbourg

5. Approval of the Minutes of the previous sitting

  President. – The Minutes of yesterday’s sitting have been distributed.

Are there any comments?

  Gorostiaga Atxalandabaso (NI). – Mr President, in the Minutes, in point 2, you can see at the end, after Parliament observed a minute's silence in memory of those who had died, the Minutes said: "Mr Gorostiaga Atxalandabaso spoke." Actually there is no mention of what I said. But if you look at the verbatim report you can see that there is a very important error which could mislead people. The verbatim report says, at the end of my words: "The action of ETA is a righteous expression of the struggle for recognition" ... etc. My words were: "The action of ETA is the enraged expression of the struggle for recognition of something quite elementary." The right to exist as Basque.

You can understand that the difference is a very substantial one. I would like to amend it. I would ask for responsibility to be taken for that because if you look at the Spanish press today, everybody has taken these words as the real ones. That is at least based on a reference but then some mass media in Spain, whereas I cited Hegel as a quotation, have put in Nietzsche and this is no coincidence at all.

I am afraid I am faced with a determination to put words into my mouth which I did not say. That is my protest. I would like to amend what is in the verbatim report. To say in the Minutes that I spoke is not sufficient. You must record the sense of what I said yesterday.

  President. – Mr Gorostiaga, if you feel that you have been misquoted, you have hereby been given the opportunity to report this. This too will be included in the Verbatim Report. We will of course examine how this has happened. I am taking note of this now.

(The Minutes were approved)