Interview: EU should do everything to avoid wars: former European Council president

Former European Council President Herman Van Rompuy said the European Union (EU) should do everything in its power to avoid wars.

"Europe is still an island of peace and stability but now, looking at the map from Afghanistan to the Atlantic Ocean, we see lots of countries involved in war," said Van Rompuy in an exclusive interview with Xinhua.

Asked about the EU immigration crisis, Van Rompuy underlined the phenomenon was caused by war, highlighting that when the international community decreased the humanitarian help to refugee camps after five years of war with no prospect for peace, refugees started to move.

"We can encourage people to stay in the region and most of them stayed, but we have to be very much aware also in Europe that we have to be more engaged in what's happening in that area," he said.

Talking about solutions to the refugee crisis, the Belgian politician said the most important short-term initiative was to cooperate with Turkey on stemming the flux of people while respecting international law and human dignity.

"We received one million people but we can't accept all of them, our population is asking our leaders to stop the massive influx of refugees," he said.

Next, Europe has to be diplomatically more engaged in the peace process, but also defeat terrorists through military intervention, which "unfortunately (this) is necessary," said the former European Council president.

According to Van Rompuy, concerning the crisis in Syria, the primary importance is to defeat the Islamic State, "because otherwise there will be no peace. Then we have to try to engage diplomatically with all actors who want peace. We have to not be tolerant with those who are defending intolerance."

"Other important elements to achieve peace are tolerance and moderation, for example, in the fight between Sunni and Shiites nobody has the monopoly of truth, we need a revolution of the moderates even if I know that today preaching this is not very successful," he said.

Asked about some initiatives to prevent conflicts in the Middle East, Van Rompuy believed that besides a settlement between Israel and Palestine, "we need to stop social injustice. There are a lot of skilled young people without any real positive prospects and without future. These problems will come back to the surface, so creating jobs is key." Endit