Thank you.
It's okay to not have rules, depending on whether it's a friend that you're working with. I understand the economic, the trade, and all of the things in our relationship with the United States. I mean, if we want to borrow a cup of sugar, we reach over the border and get it.
The point is that I think we need to decide whether we're going to be principled in all things or not. When we start picking and choosing what we do, shouldn't we have some clear, objective guidelines that we use for everybody? If you want to argue about this, Turkey is actually very important to all of us when they fight the Daesh. I think, here we go, so there they are. They're doing something we would like them to do, and then they do things we don't like them to do.
This is not an easy question. We dance around it every time we hear witnesses. Everyone's is saying, “Well, yeah, but...,” and, “Yeah, but....”
I also wonder if I could then ask a question about whether there is any responsibility, ethically, for the arms industries to have some kind of principled position on.... If they find out that they have been selling to a particular country that has always been a good client and that they've always worked well with and suddenly—like you said Turkey did—that country becomes erratic and becomes difficult to understand, is there a responsibility on the part of those people who make the arms to have a clear set of principles that they also follow?
What we do here is we try to come down on one side or the other, and there is no one side or the other. There is a very difficult problem that we need to think about before we go ahead, jump up and down, and say so and so....
I'd like to hear from you and perhaps from Mr. Maire if he has any ideas. I mean, you've obviously sanctioned Turkey.
What are some of the practical things that we can do that would improve transparency and that would put in place some kind of principled position here—the ATT regardless? Is there something we can do when the geopolitical realities continue to be fluid, flexible and changing every day?
I am not asking this because I am trying to support my government in this. I'm just asking because it is a very difficult question to answer. I don't know about my colleagues, but I know I am struggling with it.