There are many who dismiss the Council of Europe as a talking shop, since it has no executive powers at the level of its parliamentary assembly.

With the increased importance being given to the European Parliament, the C of E has had a growing tendency to live more than ever in the shadows of the EP itself.

But there have recently been issues where the council has been extremely vocal and effective in its media releases – taking a stand on issues and in areas where others feared to tread.

Apart from the recent pronouncement by its president on the Lebanese crisis, the PACE (Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe) president was perhaps the only head of a European Parliamentary Assembly to pronounce himself on the maltreatment to which democratically elected leaders in Palestine have been subjected.

Last week, Mr van der Linden deplored the arrest by the Israeli Army of the Speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council Aziz Dweik, claiming that the PLC is a democratically elected parliamentary body that derives its legitimacy from elections held in January this year, which the members of the Parliament-ary Assembly who observed them declared were conducted “in a well organised and democratic fashion”.

The C of E president also stated firmly that all legitimately elected parliamentarians enjoy parliamentary immunity unless and until they are divested of it by their own parliaments. He thus considered it totally unacceptable to now detain the duly appointed Speaker of the PLC, just as it was equally unacceptable to detain 20 other Palestinian law-makers and eight members of the Government of the Palestinian Authority on 29 June.

Mr Van der Linden ended his statement with a clear and resounding plea: “I call for their immediate release.”

This appeal might – and most probably will – fall on deaf ears, but it shows that this particular institution not only has a voice all of its own but also a conscience of which it should feel proud.

When Netanyahu ducked

the issue

Recently Mark Colvin interviewed former Israeli PM and now Opposition Leader Benjamin Netanyahu on developments in Lebanon.

What struck me most about this interview was Mr Colvin’s repeated claim that some reports have suggested that Israel had, in fact, been planning just such a war. Arguing that there have been kidnappings and other border incidents in the same area before, Mr Colvin asked him why had this one started such a conflagration, going on to add that an article in The San Francisco Chronicle claimed that more than a year ago, a senior Israeli army officer began giving off the record briefings to US and other diplomats, journalists and think-tanks, setting out the planning for the current operation in revealing detail.

This question was posed to Mr Netanyahu at least twice.

First he ignored the claim and in the second instance he merely stated: “I don’t know” when Mark Colvin stated:

“Could I ask you to answer the question direct, which was has Israel been intending to have this war for some time now?”

Perhaps sometime – possibly in the near future – some historian or retired politician or general might put things in their right perspective.

When I met Castro

I must confess that I have never been to Cuba, but I still recall very vividly the time when, in the late 1980s, Gorbachev explored the idea of bringing together in Moscow the leaders of the so-called Eastern block along with party functionaries of European social democratic parties.

It was not a particularly enlightening experience, since its tangible results were negligible as history soon overshadowed any success that the meeting might have achieved, but it was intriguing to participate in a “dialogue” with leaders of governments who were not known for their usually participative efforts.

One of the eminent guests was Fidel Castro, who I had occasion to meet during a coffee break. Since I do not speak Spanish, I did my best to communicate with him in Italian. I was surprised by his soft voice and polite manners, as well as the enthusiasm he showed for a lengthy interview RAI 3 had just screened with him in the hot seat being confronted by investigative journalist Gianni Mina’.

As doubts continue to linger about his state of health, no matter from what angle one appraised this politician he remains an iconic figure – possibly anachronistic by now – whose memory cannot be erased that easily, in spite of his arguably misguided policies and application of communism, years after the word itself became defunct.

The $64,000 question is whether the “revolution” can outlive its leader.

e-mail: [email protected]

Leo Brincat is the main opposition spokesman on foreign affairs and IT