Note:  All these stories are posted on this single page, so if you are wanting to print the story, select the text and take to your word processor.  Beginning in 2004, these stories are on separate pages.

Christianity debate divides as much as ever

EU Observer

EUOBSERVER / NAPLES - The question about whether to include a reference to Europe's Christian heritage in the Constitution has left member states as divided as ever.

EU foreign ministers were once again unable to agree following a debate on the issue on Friday afternoon (28 November) in Naples as part of a wider meeting to discuss the EU Constitution.

And the failure to agree was despite a general suggestion, but no specific text, by the Italian EU Presidency that both a reference to Christian heritage as well as reference to Europe's secular institutions could be included in the Constitution.

Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini defended the idea by saying that there is "no contradiction between the two".

He said the majority of delegations had expressed their "appreciation" for the twin reference but a minority "haven't changed their stance very much" and that this minority had strong reservations.

At the moment the draft Constitution text speaks about "drawing inspiration from the cultural religious and humanist inheritance of Europe ...".

France and Belgium have traditionally objected most strongly to any reference to Christian heritage; they were joined on Friday by Denmark, Finland and Greece.

On the other hand countries such as Poland remain strongly in favour. Speaking to journalists, Polish foreign minister Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz expressed surprise that some countries are against.

He argued that when something is to be said about Europe then Christianity must also be mentioned.

Written by Honor Mahony

http://www.euobserver.com/index.phtml?aid=13719

EU to fight back in US trade battle

EU Observer

The WTO is due to deliver its verdict on Monday (Photo: EUobserver.com)
The EU could impose sanctions on the US from the middle of next month if the World Trade Organisation rules in its favour that US steel tariffs breach international trade rules.

EU trade Commissioner, Pascal Lamy, warned on Tuesday that punitive tariffs on a range of US imports would be "a racing certainty in mid-December" if the United States failed to quickly end illegal export subsidies and lift steel tariffs.

The EU has already threatened to impose $2.2 billion in sanctions on US imports ranging from textiles to Harley Davidson motorcycles if the government does not remove steel tariffs.

On Monday (10 November), the WTO is due to deliver its verdict on an appeal against its original ruling that the US steel tariffs breach international trade rules.

The US government imposed tariffs of up to 30 percent on steel imports, in March last year, in an effort to protect domestic producers from tough foreign competition.

But this led to protests from various steel exporting countries, amongst them the EU.

The US government is currently considering whether to extend its steel import tariffs to March 2005, the BBC said.

http://www.euobserver.com/index.phtml?sid=9&aid=13373

Germany overtakes US as world’s largest exporter

In August, Germany took pole position as the worlds leading export country from the US, with exports 7% higher than the Americans, according to OECD and IMF statistics quoted by FT Deutschland.

With $62bn in exports, Germany's world share is now higher than 10 percent for the first time in several years. This also is higher than the US share.

The third largest exporter in the world is Japan.

The German economy has benefited from growth in Eastern and Central Europe, which has boosted demand for German goods - especially food and machinery. Germany now exports more to Eastern Europe than it does to the US.

"Germany has a first-class, highly-diversified product", Olaf Wortmann from the German machinery association told the FT Deutschland.

"The US competition produces lesser quality and the Japanese are delivering mass produced goods. Therefore Germany is leading in high-quality, tailor-made products".

http://www.euobserver.com/index.phtml?aid=13029

EU viewed by China as world power to rival US

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in Brussels

The European Union is the world's rising superpower, poised to overtake both America and Japan as the biggest trade and investment force in China, according to a strategic policy paper published by Beijing yesterday.

The Chinese government said the EU was transforming the global landscape with its successful currency launch and strides towards a joint foreign policy, defence, and judicial union.

Describing EU integration as "irreversible", Beijing marvelled at Europe's 25-35 per cent share of the global economy and its projected 450 million population after expanding into the former communist bloc next year.

The white paper follows a flurry of Sino-EU ventures, including the Galileo global satellite system, described as a direct challenge to the American GPS monopoly in space.

The two sides are also working together on nuclear research.

France and Germany have been pushing hardest for closer ties with China, hoping to cash in on a lucrative market but also to develop a strategic alliance as a counterweight to American power after the diplomatic trauma of the Iraq war.

Last June, the French defence minister, Michele Alliot-Marie, proposed sharing sensitive military technology with Beijing. She called for a softening of the arms embargo imposed on the country after the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989.

The Chinese already have the world's second biggest defence budget, £40 million annually, but they have to rely on outdated weaponry bought from Russia and Ukraine.

Yesterday's white paper said the ever-closer military ties rendered the EU embargo a relic from the last century.

China's efforts to court Brussels reflect a new mood of respect for the EU across Asia. India is also rushing to upgrade its ties with Europe, recruiting extra staff to lobby EU officials and MEPs.

http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=%2Fnews%2F2003%2F10%2F14%2Fweu14.xml

European super-region plan touted

EU Observer
Press Articles Guardian La Stampa
Written by Andrew Beatty

Proposals are being put forward for the creation of a European super-region which could radically reshape the face of the Union.

In what is being billed as a reworking of the Austro-Hungarian empire, regions spanning four countries - Austria, Italy, Croatia and Slovenia - want to create a region of closer integration.

According to the Guardian, unlike existing cross-border regional agreements this would cover more than one policy area. Most existing regional agreements cover only one or two policy areas.

If it were to go ahead, the plan would pose significant problems for those countries in Europe who have traditionally sought to limit the powers of the regions, such as France and the UK.

It may also serve as a catalyst for further integration projects.

According to Riccardo Illy, who represents the Italian region involved in the proposal, there is already a great deal of synergy between the regions: "They are used to economic and cultural exchanges, and close social relations", he told La Stampa.

The plan would also go some way to solving ongoing territorial disputes between Slovenia and Croatia. The two countries have recently clashed over sea boundaries, and the EU has refused to mediate.

Jörg Haider, a far-right regional politician in Austria, is said to have agreed to the plan in principle, as have some Croatian authorities, while it is said to be under discussion by the Slovenian government.

http://www.euobserver.com/index.phtml?sid=9&aid=12780

Survey Tracks Shifting Europe-US Relations

By Judy Dempsey in Brussels

The US-led war in Iraq has led to some of the most radical shifts in the transatlantic relationship since 1945 with Germany for the first time choosing Europe over the US and most Americans wanting the European Union to play a stronger role.

The findings, published on Thursday by the German Marshall Fund of the US, convey a mixed set of opinions conducted among 8,000 Americans and Europeans in June.

They show how Americans, often criticised in the aftermath of the second world war for their isolationist tendencies, now want the US to take an active role in world affairs.

With 77 per cent opting for such a role, the GMF said this was the "highest level of support since Americans were first asked the question in 1947".

A majority, too, would support the use of force to rid countries of weapons of mass destruction, a view not shared by the Europeans.

Remaining as the only superpower is another matter. Forty-seven per cent of Americans want the US to retain that role - down from last year's 52 per cent - but 37 per cent (2 per cent more than in 2002) want the EU to become a superpower.

More revealing, in the light of US difficulties in bringing security to Iraq, is that the majority of Americans want the EU to become a superpower capable of sharing the costs and risks of global problems.

Europeans, for their part, want to become a partner of the US instead of relying on it.

Forty-five per cent, compared with 64 per cent in 2002, see strong US leadership as desirable - with Britain, the Netherlands and Poland strongly backing such a role while majorities in France, Germany and Italy strongly oppose it.

Majorities in Europe also believe the EU and not the US is vital to their national interests.

GMF says the "one eye-catching change" is the sharp shift among Germans. Last year, Germany was uncertain about its global role and whether Europe or the US was its natural partner. Such uncertainty has now disappeared.

Eighty-two per cent want Germany to play an active role, up from last year's 65 per cent, and 70 per cent would back the EU becoming a superpower, up from 48 per cent in 2002.

If, however, that role meant spending more on defence, support across Europe would plummet to 36 per cent.

Note:  This story no longer posted on Internet
 

EU: Greater Role Sought In Mideast Peace Process

By Ahto Lobjakas

European Union foreign ministers today met with their Israeli and Palestinian counterparts in Brussels in a bid to provide new impetus to the "road map" to Middle East peace. EU ministers also sought to reassert the bloc's role as an important contributor to the peace process. That drive was welcomed by Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom after today's meeting, although he indicated the EU needs to do more to "balance" its approach to Israel.

Prague, 21 July 2003 (RFE/RL) -- The European Union today received a boost from Israel in its drive to assert itself as a key partner in the Middle East peace process.

News agencies quote EU officials as saying visiting Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom appeared "very positive" toward accepting a greater EU role in the implementation of the "road map" for peace in the Middle East. The process has so far been dominated by a renewed U.S. presence in the region. Diplomats say Washington has sidelined the EU from monitoring implementation of the road map.

Israel's suspicion of an EU bias toward the Palestinians has until now largely sidelined the bloc in the Middle East peace process, although the EU is one of four co-authors of the road map, together with the United States, the United Nations, and Russia.

After his meeting with the 15 EU foreign ministers today, Shalom said he had told his EU colleagues that he "fully supports" their request to play a "key role" in the peace process. He said he feels the time is right for a reassessment of EU-Israeli relations.

"I don't accept the formula that has existed for many years, that Israel can live without Europe and Europe can live without Israel. I think Israel and Europe have to live together, and that's why I'm encouraging the EU, all the time, to play a key role in the peace process and, more than that, I'm trying to convince the Israelis that there is a change in the European Union," Shalom said.

Shalom stressed the significance of the cultural and historical ties between Europe and Israel -- their shared values of democracy and the rule of law, their proximity, the fact that more than 50 percent of all Israelis hail from Europe. But he clearly indicated the EU must do more to allay Israeli concerns of a Palestinian bias. He said the EU needs to "change its approach," mentioning as one example the tendency of most EU states to vote against Israel at the United Nations.

The European Union has recently displayed an increased interest in Israel. Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister and the head of the current EU Presidency, has even raised the prospect of Israel's eventual EU membership.

More realistically, the EU's enlargement commissioner, Guenter Verheugen, said on a recent visit to Tel Aviv that both sides could benefit from upgraded economic ties. Israel is also one of the potential beneficiaries of the EU's "wider neighborhood" scheme.

Nevertheless, today's meetings brought little news in terms of the most sensitive issues on which the EU-Middle East relationship turns -- attitudes toward Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, EU views on the militant Palestinian groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and the freeing of Palestinian prisoners.

On Arafat, Shalom said he emerged from today's meeting with the feeling that Israel's strategy of isolating Arafat is gaining new supporters in Europe. "Now, more countries are aware that Arafat becomes an obstacle to peace, and that is why we have to strengthen [Palestinian Prime Minister] Abu Mazen [Mahmoud Abbas] because he looks more moderate and his government speaks with a new language. And that is why, not only us [but] the Americans and, I think, now many European countries feel the same and think the same," he said.

Yet, no EU country has so far publicly supported that view. Although Italy's Berlusconi snubbed Arafat on a recent visit to the Middle East, he has now said he will meet both Arafat and Abbas when he returns to the area in a few weeks. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was given a similar response in London last week when he tried to persuade British Prime Minister Tony Blair to cut all ties to Arafat.

Characteristically, the Palestinian foreign minister, Nabil Shaath, said today in Brussels that he, too, believes the EU will continue regarding Arafat as the legitimate head of the Palestinian people. "I leave this meeting fully assured that there is absolute unanimity by Europe -- and that includes the Italian presidency, the new members as well as the present members -- to support the democratically elected Palestinian president, President Arafat, but also to give full support to Prime Minister [Mahmoud] Abbas," Shaath said.

Earlier this month, and very much against Israeli wishes, EU member states also decided against putting Hamas on the bloc's terrorist blacklist. EU diplomats in Brussels have said the bloc believes such a move would hamper efforts at dialogue.

Finally, the EU has kept a low profile on the issue of the roughly 6,000 Palestinian prisoners being held in Israeli jails. The Palestinian side wants them freed, and groups like Islamic Jihad and Hamas have dropped heavy hints that the future of the three-month cease-fire declared at the end of last month is in danger unless Israel frees all 6,000. Israel, in its turn, has said it is only prepared to release a few hundred.

Despite the EU's intensifying mediation efforts, the United States clearly remains the key outside influence in the Middle East peace process. Most eyes will already have been turned to Washington, which will host both Sharon and Abbas on consecutive visits later this week.

Note:  This story no longer posted on the Internet

EU: Military Arm Developing More Quickly Than Expected

By Breffni O'Rourke

The European Union appears to be developing its new military arm rapidly. Its first-ever deployment of peacekeeping troops came earlier this year in Macedonia, and since then it has also sent forces to the Congo. Now the Netherlands, an EU member, has suggested that union troops be sent to Moldova to back a peace settlement there.

Prague, 16 July 2003 (RFE/RL) -- France's traditional Bastille Day military parade is always a colorful affair, with the troops swinging down the grand Champs Elysee as jets sweep overhead streaming blue, white, and red smoke.

This year the 14 July commemoration of the revolution was marked by something new. At the head of the rows of infantry, cavalry, and mechanized troops was...a German general. And immediately behind him was a unit of the new European Union military forces, complete with EU shoulder flashes on their national uniforms. This was a moment of symbolism for the embryonic EU military arm, which has recently come into existence after years of frustrating delays.

The EU undertook its first joint military deployment only in March of this year, when it sent a small and lightly armed force of some 300 "peace enhancement" troops to Macedonia.

The troops sent to that former Yugoslav republic are drawn from present and future member states of the EU, and their task is to demonstrate the international community's desire for peace in Macedonia, where there was violence in 2001 between government forces and ethnic Albanian rebels. The original six-month term of the EU soldiers appears likely to be extended by another three months at the request of Macedonian President Boris Trajkovski.

Then in June came an unexpected deployment in a part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where civil war has been raging. In contrast to Macedonia, where tranquillity now reigns, the Congo deployment of the French-led force is to a "hot" area, namely the northeastern town of Bunia.

The EU troops in Bunia have strong rules of engagement, and EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana is now pushing the United Nations to strengthen the mandate of the UN peacekeeping force in the Congo, as a means of dampening the violence.

Bunia is also the first occasion on which the EU military has used its own assets. In Macedonia, it has relied on pre-existing NATO equipment and hardware.

Brussels-based military analyst Marc Houben of the Centre for European Policy Studies says, however, the scale of the union's successes so far must be kept in perspective.

"The operation in the Congo, for example, is primarily an operation which is run by the French. It has been given the stamp or the seal of the European Union, but when it comes to operational command and control, it is a French affair to a large extent. The operation in Macedonia meanwhile is modest in scale, but it does have a very important signal value," Houben says.

This week, there's word of a new possible mission, namely a deployment in Moldova. The Netherlands, current head of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, has suggested sending EU peacekeepers to underpin a settlement between the Moldovan authorities and breakaway Russian speakers in its Transdniestr region.

EU security sources say the matter will be formally discussed at a meeting of the Union's political and security committee on 22 July.

However, committee chairman Maurizio Melani has said no decision on deployment is imminent.

In remarks to reporters, Melani said it's "clear" that Russia has "an interest and a stake" in Moldova. Russia has long had troops in that country, and diplomats say any insertion of EU forces would have to be handled carefully so as not to upset Moscow.

London-based political analyst Heather Grabbe, of the Centre for European Reform, says the importance of such a potential mission can hardly be overestimated.

"It is a really critical development in the EU's neighborhood policy, because it raises two of the biggest, most central issues, of how the EU will deal with its own backyard. One issue is how far does it actually want to get involved -- is it going to get involved in pre-emptive engagement, and basically avoid the mistakes it made over the Balkans?" Grabbe says.

The second issue, Grabbe says, deals with the extent to which the Union is willing to use force. She recalls the deep divisions over the use of force in Iraq, but she says members seem much closer to consensus on the issue when it relates to their own sphere of influence.

Taking a philosophical standpoint, analyst Houben says the EU's joint military efforts, now under way, tend to create the need for what he calls "the synchronizing of political processes at the national level" among EU member states.

But the EU being the type of unique hybrid that it is, this "synchronization" need not be characterized by a gathering of power at the center, leading to an erosion of national sovereignty of EU members. Houben puts it into a historical perspective, referring to the famous political theories of Renaissance-era realist Niccolo Machiavelli.

"All politicians, all diplomats, and scholars have read Machiavelli, and from Machiavelli they have learned that in order to be powerful, in order to be effective in the external domain, you need to concentrate power into a single pair of hands, and we have grown up with that dogma," Houben says.

But Houben does not find the sometimes sinister Machiavellian world the one which is desirable for a union of 25 more modern democratic states.

"I believe that our historic [task] -- perhaps from an academic point of view or an intellectual point of view -- is to prove Machiavelli wrong," Houben says. "The European Union, if it is to be successful, must find ways to lead, and to be effective without actually placing huge amounts of power into a single pair of hands."

On a cautionary note, Houben recalls that the Grand Dukedom of Florence, Machiavelli's stamping grounds, at one stage had a committee of some 30 graybeards running its foreign policy. That experiment, he says, did not go well.

http://www.rferl.org/nca/features/2003/07/16072003164421.asp

EU-US relations at new low

Written by Blake Evans-Pritchard
Edited by Andrew Beatty
EU Observer

The US wants the European Union on-side, but only if things are done the American way

EUOBSERVER / LONDON - Relations between the US and the EU are at their lowest point for at least a generation, according to a report published 8 July by the House of Lords in the UK.

Lord Jopling, the Conservative peer who lead the research committee that drew up the report, said that there could be serious consequences for both sides if relations are not repaired.

"The time has come to stop blaming and punishing each other for the past and to look to the future," he told EUobserver.

Lord Jopling believes that, although the EU and the US often share the same objectives, they do not always agree on how to achieve them.

He says that differences are most pronounced in the area of foreign policy, as shown by the recent crisis in Iraq.

NATO should remain the conduit for security and defence co-operation, he says, although the EU should continue its efforts to built up an independent military force.

The report says that there is a tendency for the EU to disagree with US policy simply to make its voice heard, and this is damaging for both sides.

Another problem, notes the report, is that the EU does not always speak with a single voice, and this diminishes the influence it wields on the world stage.

Iraq

The divergences between the two world powers were sharply highlighted by the Iraq crisis.

According to the House of Lords report, the war showed that there are important issues to resolve where the US and the EU do not see quite eye to eye – such as claims to a national right of preventative war, the role and authority of the UN, the relevance of commitments to NATO allies, and at what stage force should be used in dealing with international problems.

Foreign policy co-operation

The report raises concerns that the attitude coming out of Washington is that America wants the European Union on-side, but only if things are done the American way.

There tends to be a perception the other side of the Atlantic that the EU is opposing US policy in order to deliberately create a "counterweight" rather than because it fundamentally objects to what the US is doing.

There is certainly a feeling among member states that Europe should be able to stand on its own two feet, so that it does not need US support to survive.

The EU's Galileo satellite navigation project was deployed in an effort to remove reliance on the US' Global Positioning System (GPS) network. More recently, the EU has been putting together its own "rapid reaction force" (RRF) in order to demonstrate its military independence.

But Member States do not always agree with how best the EU should be standing up to its powerful neighbour.

Charles Grant, the Director of the Centre for European Reform, is quoted in the report as saying: "the British philosophy is if we get our act together as Europeans and become more effective... then we can help our partners across the Atlantic... and then they will respect us... because we are useful... The French philosophy is that Europe needs to get its act together so that it can stand up when necessary and indeed challenge the US."

The report argues that, if the EU is to have any real clout in foreign affairs, it should act with a truly united voice rather than individual Member States bickering among themselves all the time. If nothing else, the Iraq crisis showed that Member States tend to pursue their own national interests ahead of the Union's so-called Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP).

Looking to the future

The first step in repairing relations, says the report, is for both sides to avoid recrimination and name-calling over past differences. For example, in the aftermath of the Iraq conflict, more would be gained by engaging in dialogue than in public denunciation.

The relationship between Washington and Brussels should be complimentary rather than antagonistic, says the report. Disputes should not be artificially created where they do not already exist, purely in order for Europe to act as a "counterweight" to America.

The report calls for a more united Europe, and welcomes the work that the European Convention is doing, and says that the new EU constitution should consider how EU-US relations can be improved. In particular, it welcomes the proposed creation of an EU Foreign Minister, and says that such a position will help the Union find its place in the world by speaking with a single voice.

The report is worried that the EU is seeking to undermine NATO rather than compliment its military power. NATO should be the "principal and most systematic forum for EU-US consultation on security and defence issues", says the report.

Finally, Member States should take steps to increase knowledge and awareness of the EU in the US. There is a perception in Europe that Washington is often ignorant of what the EU is or what it does, and can often be deliberately dismissive of its sometimes remarkable achievements in recent years.

http://www.euobserver.com/index.phtml?print=true&sid=9&aid=12022

EU Summit to Focus on Middle East

By ROBERT WIELAARD --ASSOCIATED PRESS

PORTO CARRAS, Greece (AP) - European leaders gathered at a heavily guarded Greek resort Thursday to start a three-day summit on illegal immigration, the Middle East, their tattered ties with Washington and a contentious draft of a European Union constitution.

Police sealed off the wooded golf and casino resort on the Sithonia peninsula as navy vessels lay offshore in the northern Aegean.

The summit was initially to be held in the city of Thessaloniki. It was moved 70 miles away, however, for fear of anti-globalization protests that have marred international gatherings such as the recent G8 summit in Evian, France.

The leaders and their delegations were flown by helicopter from the Thessaloniki airport to the secluded summit venue.

The meeting was to open with a debate about ways to stem the influx of illegal immigrants, streamline their admission rules and come to a better sharing of the burden of illegal migrants and asylum seekers.

Britain, one of Europe's most popular destinations for immigrants, seeks an accord that asylum seekers must reside in the first EU country they reach to prevent them from going asylum "shopping."

The EU leaders will be joined by their counterparts from 10 European nations that will join the EU in 2004.

Over dinner, they will debate the Middle East, Iraq and ways to combat the spread of weapons of mass destruction to unstable regimes or terrorist organizations.

These issues figure prominently in the trans-Atlantic relationship, which took a pounding in recent months as EU countries, notably France and Germany, sought to block the U.S.-British war against Iraq.

On Sunday, senior officials from the EU, the United States, Russia and the United Nations - the drafters of the "road map" to peace that envisions an end to more than 32 months of violence and the creation of a Palestinian state by 2005 - meet in Jordan.

The leaders meeting in Greece will discuss trans-Atlantic ties and European security on Friday, and will also take a first look at a draft EU constitution that was completed a week ago after 16 months of negotiations.

The charter aims to streamline decision-making within the EU after the 10 new members join next year. It calls for an EU president, a foreign minister, and a more effective European Commission, the EU's executive.

While France, Germany and Italy generally back the text, Britain, Spain and others seek amendments, as do smaller countries such as Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Portugal that fear losing power to the bigger countries.

The EU leaders are to set a date to begin final negotiations on the draft charter, which must be completed by year's end.

In recent days, the EU has moved toward aligning itself with the United States on key foreign policy issues.

This week, the EU foreign ministers said they would consider declaring the political wing of the Hamas militant group a terrorist organization because of its violent opposition to the road map peace plan.

They also went on record as saying the EU could accept going to war to stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction but only after exhausting all diplomatic means.

http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/text/2003/jun/19/061902854.html

United States of Europe Challenges U.S.

NewsMax.com Wires

WASHINGTON – This would be a good month for the U.S. government to begin thinking about how it is going to deal with a federal Europe. On June 20, in Thessaloniki, Greece, ministers from the European Union will meet to finalize a draft of a constitution that will further the ambition of those who seek to rein in the sovereignty of Europe's many parts under one superstructure.

A draft of the constitution released on Feb. 20 pledges among other things to further a common foreign policy for the EU's 15 member states and to make the web of agreements governing trade, border flow and finances supreme to the law of the lands that acceded to the treaties in the first place.

Achilles Paparsenos, the spokesman for the Washington Embassy for the Republic of Greece (which holds the presidency for the European Union) told United Press International, "I don't think individual countries will give up their sovereignty under the constitution, so much as the European Union will have a more coherent role in international affairs."

And that coherent role will at least, in part, include a permanent office for the EU presidency, which now rotates every six months.

So far Washington has preferred to have it both ways on the emerging Europe. On the one hand, Washington includes the European Union as one-fourth of the Quartet that drafted the "road map" for Middle East peace. On the other hand, the EU was absent last week from the summit meetings in Aqaba, Jordan, and Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.

While U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick negotiated with his EU counterpart, Pascal Lamy, in the last round of World Trade Organization negotiations in Doha, the U.S. State Department continues to seek bilateral trade agreements with the EU's member states.

"It has generally been our view that there is no U.S. blueprint for how Europe ought to proceed with arrangements," one State Department official told UPI on Monday. "We will work with Europe whatever they choose to do."

But this hands-off approach only goes so far. In the lead up to the Iraq war, the United States picked off various European countries from the herd in Brussels. Though France and Germany attempted to muscle smaller European nations to oppose the war against Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, the Americans successfully swayed Britain, Poland and Spain to not only support the campaign diplomatically but also to send troops.

Earlier this month, the State Department's outgoing director of policy planning, Richard Haass, said Washington preferred to conduct foreign policy with the individual countries of Europe. Nonetheless the United States has quietly sought to engage the EU on the question of Iran's burgeoning nuclear weapons program.

"We have found our cooperation has been stronger, our understanding better of their objectives, and it easier to develop common approaches when we work with Brussels and the individual member states," a State Department official said Monday in an interview.

Clintonista: Bush Is Trying to Divide Europe

Charles Kupchan, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a director for European affairs at the National Security Council under Bill Clinton, said in an interview that the Bush administration behind the scenes, at least, was working to divide Europe.

"To the extent we have a policy today it is to foster divisions within Europe," he said. "We deliberately encouraged countries to break away from the Franco-German consensus on Iraq."

This strategy has to a certain extent continued after Iraq. While Bush attended the Group of Eight summit in Evian, France, he left a day later to talk Middle East peace with friendly Arab nations, while the rest of Europe stayed at the conference. Bush also chose the Polish city of Krakow, in the heart of "new" Europe, to deliver his major address on his European tour.

Behind the scenes, Bush's diplomats have encouraged the Czech Republic, the Baltic nations and other Eastern European countries to reject plans for a EU military force that have been discussed in Brussels and EU departments for the past three years.

The question for U.S. foreign policymakers in the months and years to come is whether the common values that in the past bound Europe and America together are still there. During the Cold War, Western Europe and the United States shared a common enemy in the Soviet Union and a common commitment to democracy and free trade. As a result, the United States encouraged the unification of Europe that it is seeing now.

Europeans Suck Up to Terrorists

But the world is now different. Most European governments do not believe, as the United States does, that there are, for example, "rogue nations." While the United States has attempted to isolate Iran in the past, the European Union has increased its contacts. While the United States has prosecuted "charity" fronts for Hezbollah, the militants operating out of southern Lebanon, the EU, unlike Washington, does not recognize the organization as a terrorist group.

Simon Serfaty, the director of Europe Program at Center for Strategic International Studies in Washington, said in an interview that he believed the common ties between Europe and America were stronger than the differences.

"The relationship is like a 50-year marriage. Maybe the love has faded, but it is impossible to get a divorce," he said. "There is too much common property."

Analysis by Eli J. Lake, State Department correspondent for UPI.

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2003/6/11/112846.shtml

EU 'will be new country'

The draft European Union constitution will effectively create a "new country" of Europe, the Tories have claimed.

The Conservatives have fiercely attacked the constitution, with Tony Blair already rejecting their calls for a referendum.

The advent of a president and foreign secretary along with other elements of the new constitution would give it the character of a state, shadow foreign secretary Michael Ancram claimed.

But the government's chief negotiator on the constitution, Peter Hain, said the Tories' claims were "total waffle".

Mr Hain said the new framework stated the EU would stay a partnership of nation states.

He also echoed Mr Blair's claims the Tories' secret agenda was complete withdrawal from Europe.

But Mr Ancram utterly rejected the allegation and suggested the government was afraid of a full debate on the proposals from Valery Giscard d'Estaing's Convention on the Future of Europe.

"Tony Blair knows that is not our secret agenda," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

"What he is trying to do is start a dishonest debate, as opposed to the honest debate about what sort of Europe we want to see."

"The Europe which is now on offer from the Convention, which when you add all the bits together is actually the creation of effectively a new country," he said.

'National sovereignty'

But Mr Hain told the programme: "It is explicitly in this new draft constitutional treaty that it will be a partnership of nation states with national states' identities respected and it is clarified for the very first time that that will be the case.

"The Tories are not able to produce a single thing which gives a shred of evidence for the fact that this will be a superstate.

"When you look at all the things they have said - that our national sovereignty will be abolished - that is not true.

"That we will lose our seat on the UN Security Council - that is not true. That we will not be able to go to war without EU approval - that is not true."

Mr Hain said the current six-month presidency which rotates between states and the role of foreign policy chief Javier Solana meant the EU already had a president and foreign secretary.

Denial of reprimand

"I think what is really going on here on behalf of the Tories is [an attempt] to engineer and manufacture with their anti-European friends in the media, a crisis of confidence in Britain's position in Europe and to engineer out of that crisis a position in which there would be a demand for withdrawal."

Mr Hain denied reports he had been reprimanded last week by Tony Blair following a radio interview in which he appeared to suggest that next year's elections to the European Parliament would be a de facto referendum on the new constitution.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/2952328.stm

Subdued unveiling of EU Constitution

Written by Honor Mahony
Edited by Lisbeth Kirk
EU Observer

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The first part of the future EU treaty has been unveiled amid disputes over the division of power among the EU institutions and worries that time for the Convention to debate controversial issues is running out.

"Reflecting the will of the citizens and States of Europe to build a common future, this constitution establishes the European Union, on which the Member States confer competences to attain objectives they have in common" reads the first article of Europe's future constitution.

Consisting of 59 articles, this first part deals with foreign policy, exclusive and shared tasks between the member states and the Union, and lays out the objectives and values of the Union.

Significant step forward for Union power
It is also written in simpler legal terms than previous EU documents. Up until now, the various Treaties (of Rome, Maastricht, Amsterdam and Nice) have contained up to 15 legal instruments, these have now been reduced to five and have been given more palatable names such as EU laws and framework laws.

Altogether, the treaty represents a significant step forward in terms of power for the Union. The last vestiges of member states' beloved vetoes have been taken away in justice and home affairs and in areas such as combating fraud and tax evasion. In other areas such as sport, Brussels has gained a whole new co-ordinating competence.

Uproar
Eurosceptic UK MEP Timothy Kirkhope was livid, "Mr Blair may have convinced Giscard that the UK should retain control over its taxation and defence policy but these concessions have been won at the expense of other key areas."

However, Federalists are equally unhappy. German Christian Democrat MEP Elmar Brok said "I have the impression that some important members of the Presidium are not acting as Members of the Convention but rather looking after their own interests. In doing so, they risk reducing the whole Convention to absurdity."

National parliaments cannot stop legislation
The proposals for national parliaments do not go as far as several MPs in the Convention would have liked.

While they can force the Commission to reconsider legislation if one third of the parliament objects to it; they cannot make it withdraw legislation.

Significantly, however, if the Commission is thought to have breached subsidiarity (whereby the Union should only act when it can better achieve a task than the member states), then it can be brought before the Court of Justice by national parliaments.

Best bits missing
But the unveiling of the treaty on Monday morning was rather an anti-climax as the most controversial elements - such as division of power between the institutions has been left until later.

As Convention president Valéry Giscard d'Estaing's inner team was unable to agree on these issues, which include the powers of a foreign minister, whether there should be an EU president and what the Commission president will do, this part has been left unchanged from the version that was unveiled at the end of April.

Last minute interventions from London and Madrid, both of which have an intergovernmentalist approach to the treaty, have also muddied the waters.

No religion just yet
Another controversial topic has been side stepped - religion. A reference to Europe's spiritual heritage, while not appearing in article 2 on values of the Union, will now appear in the preamble. But the exact wording has yet to be thrashed out. The preamble is likely to be unveiled this week.

Long to-do list
But with just three plenary sessions left to go, there is a lot of work to do.

Not only does the Convention's presidium have to produce the revised texts on institutions and the preamble but the Convention plenary itself must debate the whole document plus as-yet-untouched issues such as reinforced co-operation (where some member states decide to act together in a particular area) and extending the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice.

"The clock is beginning to run", said a Commission spokesperson on Monday adding that Thessaloniki, where the constitution is due to be handed over to the member states on 20 June, "is not too far off."

http://www.euobserver.com/index.phtml?sid=9&aid=11387

Israeli foreign minister considers EU membership

Written by Andrew Beatty
Edited by Lisbeth Kirk
EU Observer

One MEP claims support is growing in the European Parliament for Israel's membership. (Photo: thesetides.com)
The freshly appointed Israeli Foreign Minister, Silvan Shalom, is considering Israel's EU credentials, reports Israeli daily, Ha’aretz.

"In principle, the minister thinks a possibility exists for Israel to join the EU, since Israel and Europe share similar economies and democratic values," said a spokesperson for Mr Shalom before adding, "it doesn't mean he is preparing the dossier for applying tomorrow".

MEP, Marco Pannella, of the Transnational Radical Party is said to be heading the campaign for Israeli membership and claimed on Tuesday that Israel does not exclude submitting an application for full membership during the term of this government.

Mr Pannella claims that support is growing in the European Parliament for Israel's membership. However full membership is highly unlikely in the foreseeable future.

Any acceptance of Israel as a member is likely to be based on a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and substantially improved Arab-Israeli relations.

The political criteria for entering the EU requires would-be members to have good relations with their neighbours.

At present this would mean some creative map reading, or Israel to dramatically improve its relations with Lebanon, Syria, and most crucially Palestine.

Other criteria ask candidates to demonstrate a respect for minorities and human rights, including the rejection of state sponsored extrajudicial killings.

http://www.euobserver.com/index.phtml?print=true&sid=9&aid=11313

European Parliament takes on 162 new members

EU OBSERVER
Written by Lisbeth Kirk
Edited by Honor Mahony

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - On 1 May 2003, the European Parliament grows to 788 members, when 162 members from the 10 new member states join the house as observers.

Of the new-comers 69 (42%) have chosen to join the European People's Party, EPP-ED. The group will maintain its position as the largest group in the European Parliament with more members than the next two political groups (Socialists and Liberals) combined.

The second largest group in the European Parliament, the European Socialists will take on 58 observers (36%), and will grow to 233 members in total.

13 observers (8%), from six candidate countries, will join the Liberal group and strengthen the position of the ELDR as the third largest group in the 'enlarged' European Parliament with a total of 66 members.

The smaller groups will receive few new members. The United Left / Nordic Green Left group is expected to have 6 (4%) of the new observers, the Union for Europe of the Nations Group, UEN, 2 (1%), the Greens / European Free Alliance will have one new observer member from Latvia and the Group for a Europe of Democracies and Diversities, EDD, have so far not reached agreement to take observer members from the applicant countries.

13 of the newcomers have so far not joined any political groups and some of them are still negotiating membership.

The acceding states will become fully fledged member states on 1 May, 2004, provided they approve membership in planned referenda. Until then, the 162 observers, who are appointed by their national parliaments, will have no voting rights.

http://www.euobserver.com/index.phtml?sid=9&aid=11069

A new Europe is being Born!

EU Observer
Written by Dan-Daniel Tomozeiu
Edited by Andrew Beatty

EUOBSERVER / SALT&PEPPER - The Athens summit was a very important moment for EU’s history as well as for the history of the world. On one hand the EU opened its gates for 10 new countries that will strengthen the Union through their diversity.

On the other we saw an EU in which the 15 members were trying to bridge over their differences and to emphasize their common points. A European Union that only a few months ago seemed to have an unsure future is now gathering powers.

But what we saw in Athens is just the show put on for the media, the EU maturation process is well on the way and only personal ambitions could stop it from now on. The clear sign of a new Europe, with an enforced cohesion was given through the conference of the eighteen "smaller" EU present and future members that finally said "Enough is enough!" The common stand of the eighteen will probably open the road for a more supranational vision of the Union; no more shady agreements between the big five on the CAP, no more individuals speaking on behalf of Europe as a whole. The only way to go further is to stay together and think big.

Even if highly criticised for his attitude in the Convention, Mr. Giscard d’Estang might have actually given the EU the impulse it needed in order to increase its strength and political will.

Trying to take away the veto power in CFSP issues, will further push for an increase in trust between the member states and will give more political power to the Union as a whole. Served nicely together with the already famous "exit clause", the reform of the CFSP represents a major step forward in the transformation of the EU into a real political union.

More strength and better positioning

Externally the Union might actually be able to save its face after the whole fiasco over Iraq.

What seemed to be a crazy initiative of building a European common defense based on the "coalition of the willing" principle, has the potential to redirect the whole EU and to relocate it on the world map.

Since Mr. Blair hinted that the UK may take part in the conference organised by Luxemburg, Belgium, Germany and France on the formation of European defence policy scheduled for the 29th of April, and the chances are increasing that Mr. Berlusconi will be there too, the event is increasing in importance.

If France and the UK, the two major European military powers, may now both attend the conference, then the initiative might actually have a future and we might be seeing a European army sooner than we expected.

The presence of both Mr. Blair, Mr Bush’s number one friend, and Mr. Berlusconi, Mr Putin’s friend, will create a very positive image for the new European military policy. Finally the EU would be sending a clear message to both the US and Russia, "we are not against you, we want cooperation."

The EU seems to be ready for a new start with a new shape made out of 25 (soon 27) countries, with a new internal order in which the smaller countries have a heavy word and push for more cohesion, and a new international role as an independent structure that wants to collaborate with the other world players. What we saw in the past few weeks is just the beginning of a new Europe that could one day be much more than it is today. There are still important steps to be taken by the European leaders, but the "seeds" are good and the climate is favorable, a new Europe is about to be born!

http://www.euobserver.com/index.phtml?sid=9&aid=11009

Palestine: new deal could facilitate EU 'road map'

EU Observer
Written by Andrew Beatty
Edited by Sharon Spiteri

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - A power-sharing agreement between leaders of the Palestinian Authority has raised the prospect of an EU-backed peace plan being presented to the world.

In a breakthrough just hours before a self-imposed deadline, Yasser Arafat, the chairman of the Palestinian Authority, and Mahmoud Abbas, the prime minister designate, agreed on Wednesday (23 April) to a power-sharing deal which looks set to substantially curb Mr Arafat’s influence over the running of the Authority.

The deal, which will see Mr Abbas act as interior minister as well as prime minister, will also place an Abbas supporter, Mohammed Dahlan, at the helm of the crucial ministry for security.

Mr Arafat had initially rejected this appointment fearing it would further weaken his grip on power, something which the US and Israel have been strongly pushing for.

After intense pressure from the international community and a threat of resignation from the would-be prime minister, Mr Arafat appears to have backed down.

Mr Abbas’ cabinet will now have to be approved by the Palestinian Legislative Council. Washington has said it will give the go-ahead to publish a long-awaited peace plan backed by the international community once Mr Abbas formally takes up his new role.

Two state solution

The so-called 'road map' for peace, adopted by the EU, Russia, the US and UN (the Quartet) in December, sets out a three-stage solution to the conflict in the Levant, culminating in 2005 with the establishment of a viable Palestinian state.

Moves by Brussels and others to get the plan published earlier have been repeatedly frustrated by US negotiators who, to date, have not been satisfied by the timing of its release, delaying its publication and repeatedly shifting the goalposts.

On Wednesday the president of the European Commission Romano Prodi released a statement welcoming the agreement between Mr Arafat and Mr Abbas:

"This marks a major step forward for the Palestinian Authority as it pursues the reforms necessary to build an administration that will provide the foundations of a viable Palestinian state."

According to Israel Radio the Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, said his government would now "make every effort to reach a diplomatic settlement" adding, "of course it is very important that on the other side is someone who desires an end to terror."

http://www.euobserver.com/index.phtml?aid=10992 

18 small countries unite in Athens on EU future

EU Observer, Written by Lisbeth Kirk, Edited by Honor Mahony

EUOBSERVER / ATHENS - The days are over in Europe when only leaders of big states get together to prepare common positions ahead of important European summits.

This morning, 16 April, heads of states from 18 smaller European countries gathered in the Ballroom of the Hotel Inter Continental in Athens. The meeting, named the "Benelux Breakfast", was initiated by the three Benelux countries with the aim of creating a united front ahead of the meeting with Convention president Valéry Giscard d’Estaing later today in Athens.

The Belgian premier Guy Verhofstadt gave the opening speech while prime ministers, along with their foreign ministers, had their morning coffee, rolls and orange juice.

Luxembourg to speak on behalf of all

The meeting agreed that Luxembourg's Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker should speak on behalf of all 18 countries at the meeting with Mr Giscard later today.

The smaller countries have agreed a list of seven points to be presented including a call for equality among member states, institutional balance and a refusal to create a new post of president of the Council. However, the group favours that a new post can be set up to manage external relations - although the Netherlands has some reservations about the exact nature of a minister for foreign affairs.

Mr Verhofstadt told the EUobserver after the breakfast that the smaller countries had felt the initiative was needed to make "sure that Mr Giscard is listening".

In the future, the group will keep in contact at the level of Directors of European Affairs, but new meetings at ministerial level are not planned for the moment.

Besides the three Benelux countries, four other member states - Austria, Portugal, Ireland and Finland - also participated. Nine of the acceding countries, expected to join the EU next year were present. Only Poland, which is regarded to be a big county, was conspicuous by its absence.

Romania and Bulgaria, which are likely to join the EU in 2007, were present on the list of participants, as well.

Denmark and Sweden not on board

Two small countries Denmark and Sweden did not participate. They were described as more "intergovernmental minded" as they tend to support the big countries' wish to have a permanent president of the European Union.

According to Mr Verhofstadt the countries are welcome to join the small countries's club if they can agree to the seven points. For their part, the Finns expressed the wish to bring the Nordic countries, as a group, into future meetings.

Greece, current holders of the six-month rotating presidency, (a system that the 18 today in Athens will push so hard to keep in a future Europe), could not partake in the meeting as it has to maintain a neutral position at the helm of the EU.

http://www.euobserver.com/index.phtml?print=true&sid=9&aid=10939

EU's party for new 10 crashed by war in Iraq

Frank Bruni/NYT The New York Times

ATHENS The road from the airport into the heart of this city is lined with the flags of the European Union: not only the 15 countries in the club, but also the 10 whose leaders will sign accession treaties here Wednesday.

The signing ceremony, at the foot of the Acropolis, represents a milestone in the Union's largest expansion, and the flags are a testament to that - the symbolic assertion of a stronger, more integrated Europe.

But at the end of the road, in the city's central square, hangs a different kind of banner.

"Not wanted: the butchers Blair, Aznar and company," reads the sign, which was raised by anti-war protesters and takes aim at the British and Spanish prime ministers and others in the union who supported the invasion of Iraq.

Greece, like France and Germany, opposed it. The placement of the banner, across the street from the Greek Parliament, evokes that schism and the degree to which it overshadows the convergence of European heads of state for the ceremony and a series of meetings here this week.

Intended as a showcase of unity, their gathering comes at a time of significant division.

"This was supposed to be a historic summit, showcasing Europe on the upswing," said Steven Everts, a Dutch researcher at the Center for European Reform, an independent group based in London. "That's what the stage managers planned."

"But that's not how it feels," Everts continued. "Europe is in a foul mood. Everybody's got grudges against everybody else."

Despite the efforts of many of the EU's leaders, it could not speak with a single voice about the American-led campaign to depose Saddam Hussein.

President Jacques Chirac of France worked to block a United Nations Security Council resolution to authorize explicitly the use of force in Iraq. Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain sent troops there. So as Chirac, Blair, Chancellor Gerhard Schroder of Germany and other European heads of state began arriving here Tuesday night, they confronted issues that ranged beyond their originally planned discussions about the kind of muscle Europe could exert in the world.

They first had to see if the union can heal the internal wounds opened by the American-led military campaign to depose Saddam.

Before that campaign, many Union leaders talked about a common European foreign policy backed by a stronger European defense force. Many still do.

But the war in Iraq underscored the difficulty of that goal and created new questions, including what kind of role Europe should and can play in the reconstruction of Iraq and where the United Nations fits into the process.

Kofi Annan, the UN secretary-general, accepted an invitation to address European heads of state at a meeting here on Thursday morning. He is expected to make a pitch for the UN's vigorous involvement.

Already Tuesday night, the atmosphere here was tense, as hundreds of anti-war and anti-globalization protesters distributed leaflets that encouraged people to take to the streets Wednesday and Thursday.

Greek law enforcement officials expect thousands of demonstrators and, to maintain order and security, plan to shut down public transportation in most of the city center and close the center to regular traffic Wednesday and Thursday.

More than 10,000 police officers will be on hand.

Greece has been the site of especially fervent protests against the war, and the U.S. Embassy in Athens has been under frequent siege.

Britain, too, has been a target of Greek anger. Late last week, the organizers of an international book fair here announced that they had withdrawn their invitation to British participants, who were supposed to be the guests of honor.

Apart from the war, there are conflicts within the Union, and its expansion may sharpen them.

The addition of 10 countries, which are slated to become members next year, raises questions about the balance between powerful Union stalwarts like France and Germany and tiny newcomers like Malta.

While some of the more populous countries would like to abolish the Union's rotating six-month presidency, which Greece currently holds, many of the less populous countries would like to maintain it.

"We have to readjust certain institutions," said Panayiotis Ioakimidis, the president of the Hellenic Center for European Studies here, in an interview Tuesday.

But Ioakimidis said that the challenges confronting the Union should not divert attention from the significance of Wednesday's ceremony, which will bring many formerly Communist Eastern European countries into the Union's fold.

"It's a huge contribution to stability, prosperity and democracy in Europe," he said, adding that it demonstrated that recent conflicts were a setback for the Union, not a change of course.

"On the fundamental question of whether to forge ahead with European unity and integration, there is no serious disagreement," Ioakimidis said.

http://www.iht.com/articles/93373.htm

EU Ministers Discuss Possible Role in Postwar Iraq

German World

Foreign ministers from the European Union are discussing possible plans for involvement in postwar Iraq at a meeting in Luxembourg. While humanitarian relief heads the agenda, some are suggesting a peacekeeping force.

EU foreign ministers meeting in Luxembourg on Monday had no small task to consider. After the fall of Baghdad, the European Union is considering two working proposals designed to provoke a wide-ranging debate on the 15-nation bloc's role in postwar Iraq and what concrete measures it should take in the reconstruction of the war-torn country.

The 14 ministers, minus Britain's Jack Straw who is in the Gulf, are likely to avoid the sensitive issue of making firm decisions over Iraq while military action continues in the country. The proposals -- one from the European Commission; one from the Greek presidency -- will analyze the role of the EU in post-conflict situations that it has committed to in the past, such as Afghanistan, East Timor, Kosovo and Cambodia and could be used as blueprints for any plan for EU involvement. Among other possible topics for discussion is the idea of sending an EU envoy to Iraq or setting up an EU mission in the country.

EU to concentrate on humanitarian relief

However, it remains unclear what role, if any, the European Union will take in postwar Iraq. It is unlikely that the EU will commit itself to answering that question at the meeting.

In a proposal outlined by EU External Affairs Commissioner Chris Patten, the EU commission has urged the foreign ministers to find a quick common position on the role of the U.N. and the EU in the reconstruction of postwar Iraq. "If the EU is in a position to clarify early which role it wants to play in Iraq after the conflict, then it could possibly influence the contents of a U.N. resolution on the process," the proposal said.

EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana described the meeting as a chance to take stock of events and regroup for decisions ahead. "I expect a very solid debate," he told the Associated Press. "It's a moment to take stock of what has been going on and to begin to take decisions although I don't think that today will take very fundamental decisions ... it's to get a sense of where we are."

According to diplomats in Luxembourg, the EU will, for the time being, confine itself to discussing how the EU can help in the shorter-term matter of getting aid to the Iraqi people.

The European Commission has already begun to channel €21 million ($22.5 million) in humanitarian relief money into Iraq and is pressing the member states to release another €79 million. "The first priority for the moment is humanitarian aid: how to mobilize to deliver aid in the most efficient and fastest way possible for the Iraqi people," one EU diplomat told the BBC. "The second is security. On this point, there is a consensus that this task is incumbent upon the military forces on the ground," he added, with much of Iraq in chaos since U.S. soldiers swept into Baghdad last week.

No action has been excluded

But France's European Affairs Minister Noelle Lenoir hinted that the EU's involvement may go beyond distributing aid when she was interviewed on French public radio broadcaster RFI, saying that the EU's role in Iraq may not be limited to humanitarian relief, and that "nothing has been excluded".

Refusing to be drawn into a debate on a possible EU military peace-keeping force in Iraq, Lenoir explained, "What we don't want is for each country to go off on its own, a situation we regretted a short while back. Each country can make proposals and suggestions, we've done it ourselves. But when it comes to action, the Union must present itself as a political entity, a community of states, all going in the same direction," she added.

The EU has been slowly establishing a rapid reaction force, which began its first operation in Macedonia last month, and its use in Iraq could be a topic for discussion over the next few days.

The peace can be won militarily: Fischer

German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer believes that after the war is over, order can be achieved militarily with Europe's peacekeeping experience and help to secure peace in Iraq. Fischer said on Sunday in an interview with Swiss weekly NZZ am Sonntag that, "the danger does not go away after a military solution, quite the opposite. We must win the peace when the war is over militarily."

Making his case for European involvement in Iraq, Fischer added, "It's not that there's too much America, there's not enough Europe. Europe is especially strong in matters that are not purely military. That can be seen in the Balkans, and is also true in Afghanistan." German peacekeeping forces are currently in joint command in Afghanistan.

EU leaders agreed on UN role

While the European Union discusses what should happen next in Iraq, the general consensus voiced throughout the member states is that the United Nations should have a pivotal role in the reconstruction of Iraq and that every effort must be made to return the country to a state of sovereignty.

Fischer too emphasized that the U.N. should play a central role in postwar Iraq. "I believe, that the umbrella of the U.N. is of decisive importance when one considers the enormity of the tasks involved," he said.

Despite the differences between "the willing", British Prime Minister Tony Blair, together with Spain's Jose Maria Aznar, and the EU "anti-war" leaders, France and Germany, it seems that EU leaders agree on one thing -- the central role of the United Nations in Iraq's reconstruction.

Returning from a two-day summit on Iraq in Saint Petersburg with Russia's Vladimir Putin, German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and French President Jacques Chirac demanded a central role for the United Nations in rebuilding Iraq. Chancellor Schröder stressed that "the U.N. Security Council must confer legitimacy" on any reconstruction drive in Iraq.

Bridges to be built at Athens summit

As a result of growing calls for United Nations involvement, Secretary General Kofi Annan has cancelled visits to the UK, Germany, France and Russia to attend a special EU summit in Athens that begins in Wednesday.

It is likely that the debate will continue in the wings at the so-called "kiss and make up" summit in Athens where the 10 EU candidate states will sign accession treaties. It will be the first meeting between the divided EU leaders since the Iraq war began.

Note:  This story no longer posted on the Internet.

Berlin’s New Anti-American Axis--Fischerism spreads.

By Ion Mihai Pacepa

On February 10, 2003, the government of Germany began building a new, anti-American Berlin-Moscow-Paris Axis. As one of the former Soviet bloc experts on German matters (and chief of a bloc intelligence station in West Germany), I had been waiting for something like that to happen ever since October 1998, when Joschka Fischer became Germany's foreign minister.

Fischer is an indirect product of the old anti-American intelligence community to which I once belonged. In 1975 Libya's dictator, Colonel Muammar Qaddafi, informed Romania's tyrant, Nicolae Ceausescu — through me — that he was preparing a terrorist attack against the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), and asked my boss to provide him with blueprints of OPEC's temporary headquarters in Vienna. Ceausescu agreed, and the Romanian espionage service (the DIE) complied. The December 1975 takeover of OPEC's headquarters in Vienna resulted in the seizure of 60 OPEC officials and staff members as hostages. The kidnapping was organized by Qaddafi and the infamous Ilich Ramírez Sánchez — "Carlos" or "the Jackal."

Twenty-two years later, Carlos was arrested in Khartoum, Sudan, by the French counterintelligence service (DST), with whose director, Yves Bonnet, I had earlier cooperated after leaving Romania. Carlos was immediately taken to Paris, where he was charged with killing two French police officers in 1979; he was sentenced to life in prison. During interrogation, Carlos asserted that his deputy for the OPEC operation had been German terrorist Hans Joachim Klein, codenamed "Angie," who had killed an OPEC security man and an Austrian policeman during that attack. Carlos also testified that the weapons used for the OPEC operation had been kept in an apartment in Frankfurt/Main, where Klein was then living with two other "red revolutionaries" of those days, Daniel Cohn-Bendit and Joschka Fischer.

In 2000, Klein, who was a fugitive, was also arrested by the French DST. He was deported to Germany, where he was charged with abetting Carlos's OPEC terrorist operation, and he cooperated with the prosecution. According to Klein, on December 17, 1975 — four days before the attack — the terrorists led by Carlos had met with officials of the Libyan embassy in Vienna, who provided the blueprints of the building and the security details, which had been passed to them by my DIE. (The DIE had an agent in Vienna who had access to this information.) "The fact that the necessary information about the [OPEC] conference building came from Libya convinced me that the action could be carried out," Klein testified during his trial. Klein was sentenced to only nine years in prison, since he had aided investigators.

Joschka Fischer, who testified as a character witness at Klein's trial in 2001, refuted as "grotesque" the allegation that the arms used in the OPEC attack had been kept in the apartment he shared with Hans Joachim Klein and Daniel Cohn-Bendit (currently a member of the European Parliament). I have reason to question Fischer's statement. In a January 1976 thank-you message to Ceausescu — also sent through me — Qaddafi had emphasized that Carlos's OPEC operation would not have been possible without the help of the DIE (which had provided the blueprints of OPEC headquarters) and a "West German revolutionary group in Frankfurt/Main" (which had provided Carlos with both manpower and arms). (In giving me the message, Qaddafi, who knew I had at one time been stationed in Frankfurt/Main as chief of the DIE's West German station, specifically called my attention to the mention of "your" Frankfurt.)

After Carlos was arrested by the DST, German journalist Bettina Roehl (daughter of the late Ulrike Meinhof, co-leader of the terrorist Baader-Meinhof organization) revealed that Fischer did indeed belong to a Frankfurt/Main terrorist group during the 1970s. She also provided pictures showing a helmeted Fischer beating a German police officer during an April 7, 1973, violent demonstration in Frankfurt/Main. The pictures show Fischer fighting side by side with Klein, Carlos's deputy in the 1975 attack on the OPEC headquarters in Vienna. In 2002, after these photographs had been authenticated by the German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Fischer publicly apologized to the beaten police officer. Bettina Roehl also disclosed that Fischer had been the main advocate of using petrol bombs in a 1976 demonstration in which a policeman almost died of terrible burns. This information was also vehemently denied by the German foreign minister.

Veteran German terrorist Margrit Schiller asserted in her book Es war ein harter Kampf um meine Erinnerung that in the 1970s, Fischer had been in contact with illegal members of the Red Army Faction (RAF) in Frankfurt/Main (a terrorist organization my DIE station was at the time supporting with information and money), and that he had thrown stones at representatives of West Germany's pro-American government. Once again, Fisher has denied both accusations. But Schiller, who in the 1970s belonged to the RAF, remembers staying in 1973 at the Frankfurt apartment of "Herr Fischer and Daniel Cohn-Bendit," having breakfast with Fischer, and going on a pub crawl with him. In October 2002, Fischer was asked by a German prosecutor about this statement — but he dodged the question, replying simply that his flat had not been a hostel for terrorists.

A 1997 semi-official biography of Joschka Fischer, by Sibylle Krause-Burger, indirectly confirms that Fischer was also involved in hurling stones at West German authorities. These were not spontaneous demonstrations — they were all financed by the Soviet bloc foreign-intelligence community, including my own DIE when I was at its helm. Krause-Burger's book describes how, in a public debate held in 1974 with the Young Socialist functionary Kartsen Voight, Fischer defended throwing stones at the "representatives of the system" as being a legitimate defense against the tyranny of the (West German) government. It is significant that Voight is now responsible for relations with the U.S. in Fischer's ministry of foreign affairs.

It may never be possible to prove "beyond the shadow of a doubt" Joschka Fischer's connection with the Soviet KGB, but I do know that the KGB — and my DIE — was financing West Germany's anti-American terrorist movements in the 1970s, while I was still in Romania. Fischer's evidently ingrained anti-Americanism is now spreading throughout the German government, and beyond. This is a monumental display of ingratitude to the 405,399 American soldiers who gave their lives to defeat Berlin's old Axis, as well as to the millions of American taxpayers who spent trillions of dollars to rebuild Germany's war-torn economy and to protect West Germany from falling into Communist clutches.

— General Ion Mihai Pacepa is the highest-ranking intelligence officer ever to have defected from the former Soviet bloc. He is currently finishing a new book, Red Roots: The Origins of Today's Anti-Americanism.

— See Mr. Armstrong's commentary quoting this article.

http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-pacepa021403.asp

EU launches first military venture

DAWN

BRUSSELS--The European Union launches its first military operation on Monday but this ground-breaking if modest new venture for the 15-nation economic bloc may draw scant attention because of the Iraq war.

To the intense frustration of EU officials, the launch of Operation Concordia, taking over a 300-soldier peacekeeping mission in Macedonia from Nato, has been overshadowed by the giant military action in the Gulf.

"In normal times, this would be front page news. Now, we'll be lucky to get a line in the briefs column," one official said.

Although tiny in scope and limited to six months, the Macedonian mission is an important test bed for future larger and more complex peacekeeping and humanitarian operations for the 15-nation EU's embryonic Rapid Reaction Force.

It is also a model for burden-sharing with the United States in which the EU is gradually taking over the main responsibility for stabilising and rebuilding the Balkans after a decade of ethnic wars halted by US-led military intervention.

EUFOR: The force, known as EUFOR, will be under the command of German Admiral Rainer Feist, who is also Nato's deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe. A French general will be in charge of the 300 lightly armed peacekeepers drawn from 27 nations.-Reuters

http://www.dawn.com/2003/03/31/int4.htm

US-Europe split is forever

By Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON: Try as he might, British Prime Minister Tony Blair's desperate efforts to bridge the growing divide between the United States and Europe are doomed to fail in the long run, says Charles Kupchan , an influential foreign-policy expert and former National Security Council (NSC) officer.

Blair, who is visiting US President George W. Bush to focus on "how we get America and Europe working again together as partners and not as rivals", may make some progress in the short run, according to Kupchan, but larger geo-political and domestic forces are working against him.

Kupchan, whose controversial book, 'The End of the American Era', defied the confident, imperial views of the hawks around President George W. Bush when it was released late last year, has derived a certain gloomy satisfaction out of developments over the last several months as Washington's relations with its traditional NATO allies, especially Germany and France, have plummeted to their lowest levels since World War Two.

The book, which warned that the triumphalism displayed by Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld, and the neo-conservative ideologues who surround them was fundamentally delusional, predicted just such a trans-Atlantic split.

"What surprises me since I wrote the book is the speed with which the change has taken place," Kupchan said in his office at the Council on Foreign Relations here. "My sense is that George W. Bush has put history into fast forward."

"Never did I imagine when I sent in the galleys (of the book) a year ago, that what I think is an irreparable rift would have opened up with Europe, and the United States would essentially have said to the world, 'We don't care what the (United Nations) Security Council says', by March 2003."

Kupchan says he would have predicted the divide would develop over a decade or more.

According to the author, the kind of unilateralism that the Bush administration has put into overdrive since taking office was already evident during the Clinton administration, when, for example, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright bragged that the United States had become "the indispensable nation" because of its ability to build "coalitions of the willing" to intervene in other countries, even without Security Council approval.

But just as Clinton's "liberal humanitarianism" was derided by Republicans as "international social work", Bush's far more muscular and self-righteous assertion of unilateral US prerogatives, especially after the Sept 11, 2001, attacks on New York and the Pentagon, hides a much more deep-rooted isolationist impulse that will inevitably turn the United States inward.

This key point - that isolationism and unilateralism are two sides of the same coin - is often misunderstood both by US and foreign politicians, who have assumed that the administration's global 'war on terrorism' will necessarily lead Washington to broaden its international commitments.

While such reasoning may appear logical - after all, how else can one combat trans-national terrorism except with international co-operation? - it overlooks the peculiar psychology of US attitudes, particularly, as Kupchan notes, in Bush's geographical base in the South and in the Rocky Mountain West, vis-a-vis the rest of the world.

In Kupchan's words, isolationism and unilateralism "share common ideological origins in America's fear of entanglements that may compromise its liberty and sovereignty. They also share origins in the notion of US exceptionalism, providing the nation an impetus to cordon itself off from the international system, but also to remake that system as America sees fit".

"It is precisely because isolationism and unilateralism are so deeply embedded in the country's political culture that they pose a dual threat to liberal internationalism, inducing the United States to retreat from the global stage even as it seeks to re-create the world in its image," he writes.

In addition, according to the author, the new imperialists around Bush underestimate the speed with which the US public will tire of bearing the kind of "global policeman" burden that the administration has adopted as its grand strategy, even in the 'war against terrorism'.

"The prevailing wisdom is, if we get hit (by terrorism) again, it will just reinforce our anger and determination to take the battle to all quarters of the world," he said. "But I don't think terrorism plays like that, and, if the costs to American global engagement bring terror to the homeland - or American tourists get blown up here and there - it's quite plausible to me that it will lead to increased isolationism, not to more and more political support for running the world."

That the main split should take place with Europe is not surprising, if only because traditional US isolationism meant precisely, until Adolf Hitler declared war on the United States in December 1941, non-alignment with European powers.

Europe was seen as morally corrupt, cynical, and decadent - all characterizations of the "Old Europe" that once again are commonly heard in Washington, particularly from the coalition of hard-right Republicans, neo-conservatives, and Christian Right leaders who support Bush's policies - compared with the rising and redemptive power of "America".

But despite neo-conservative tracts that depict Europe as having moved to the Kantian paradise of "perpetual peace", these same forces underestimate the degree to which an increasingly unified and self-confident Europe offers an alternative pole in Washington's "unipolar world", according to Kupchan.

In the book, he compares the coming rivalry to that which developed between Rome and Constantinople after the death of the Emperor Constantine in 337 A.D. But as Blair, as well as the leaders of Spain, Italy and other members of the "New Europe", would argue, Europe is not yet a counterweight to Washington, and Kupchan says that he would not have predicted that the Iraq crisis would have been as divisive for Europe as it has been for the trans-Atlantic alliance. "The unitary Europe that I envisaged in the book doesn't exist today."

On the other hand, he believes that the current crisis "will ultimately strengthen Europe because it has been so damaging to the Atlantic relationship that even those, like Blair, who want a Europe that's tightly bound to the US will find out that that's not doable. And they will ultimately throw their weight behind a stronger and more independent Europe".

Indeed, according to the latest polls from seven European countries, including those whose leaders have backed Bush, strong majorities favour a more independent stance vis-a-vis Washington.

While Kupchan wishes the trans-Atlantic split were reparable, he thinks the Iraq crisis "will prove to be the defining turning point which effectively brought the alliance to an end".

"Instead of letting these deeper tectonic forces (separating the US from Europe) gradually work their way to the surface, the clash over Iraq was like an earthquake, so we could see them in plain view. It made clear that, basically, France, Germany and Russia are prepared to contemplate life after Pax Americana, that the United States is prepared to part company with its key allies on the most fundamental principles of word order, and once that happens for all to see, you can't go back."-Dawn/The InterPress News Service.

http://www.dawn.com/2003/03/28/int12.htm

Prodi issues call to arms

EU Observer

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The President of the European Commission, Romano Prodi, on Wednesday, told EU leaders that it was time to militarise or be left by the wayside.

In a keynote address to the European Parliament, Mr Prodi said "The moment of truth for Europe's foreign and defence policy has come."

"The choice is clear: do we want to be left out, all of us, from the management of world affairs? Or do we want to play a part, on an equal footing with our allies, in building a new world order?"

Mr Prodi sought to impel EU institutions and national governments to support building joint defence capabilities by upping the stakes considerably, claiming Europe's very future may hang on the way it faces up to the current crisis.

Do not miss the opportunity

The Presidium of the Convention on the Future of Europe is due to submit defence proposals next month after its President, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing meets with heads of state in Athens.

The Commission's president would like to see the recommendations go further beyond merely the results of the convension's working group, which did not even reach agreement over member states having the duty to defend each other if one is attacked.

"I appeal to all its members: let us not waste this opportunity!" he pleaded.

His intervention was broadly backed by parliamentarians who feel estranged with what Green leader Daniel Cohn-Bendit described as the US' mission to "free the world with the help of god."

Mini summit welcomed

Mr Prodi welcomed a Belgian initiative - backed by France, Germany and Luxembourg - to hold a mini summit on augmenting the EU's defence capabilities.

The meeting is scheduled for the 29 April in Brussels, shortly after leaders meet in Athens.

He stressed that the door should be left open for all member states to join in, but told journalists later that a "more cooperative stance from some member governments" was needed.

The UK has so far been luke warm about the prospect fearing such a move would undermine NATO and so Europe's partnership with the US.

President of the Parliament Pat Cox was of a different opinion. "A series of mini-Europe's falls short of the one Europe we need and want."

A proxy war

Mr Prodi's spokesman later denied reports that the president wanted to see the end of NATO.

"The view of the President is that NATO should in future have two strong pillars, an American and a European one. In fact, the President wants to strengthen NATO. "

But the message was clear, Europe will not be dictated to.

"We Europeans are not from Venus, as some would have us believe. The peoples of this old Europe have a long and bloodthirsty past behind us" Mr Prodi said in what will be seen as a snipe at some in the current US administration.

"A past that has taught us to base our Union in law and to work for an international order founded on right, not on might. But we know that humanitarian policies alone are not enough. And it is not enough to outstrip the other main players in the area of development aid policy."

"We know the world will not take heed of us until we put an end to our divisions. Until we stop relying on the European Union for economic growth and the United States for security" Mr Prodi said, before insisting "there is nothing anti-American in what I am saying."

Written by Andrew Beatty
Edited by Sharon Spiteri

http://www.euobserver.com/index.phtml?print=true&sid=9&aid=10709

Brussels sees Union extending to west Balkans

By Judy Dempsey in Brussels

The enlargement of the European Union is not going to stop next year when 10 new countries join but instead will extend to the western Balkans, according to a report issued today by the European Commission.

"The unification of Europe will not be complete until it includes its south-eastern part - the countries of the western Balkans will be the next in line, at their own individual pace," it says. The countries include Croatia, Serbia-Montenegro, Macedonia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Albania.

The lengthy report, drawn up by Romano Prodi, Commission president, and Chris Patten, the external affairs commissioner, coincides with one of the most difficult and contentious periods for the EU.

The 15 countries are divided over the war in Iraq and are increasingly concerned about the impact 10 more countries will have on forging any consistent and strong common, foreign and security policy, let alone the institutional havoc that will ensue.

Yet, say diplomats, the EU has set itself the task of moving beyond stabilising the Balkans to giving the region a perspective that will lead them to Europe. With Croatia's EU application now submitted and Macedonia planning to do so later in the year, the Commission can no longer duck the issue that the Balkans eventually wants to join the EU.

Moreover, diplomats add that such a perspective has become even more necessary following the recent assassination of Zoran Djindjic, Serbian prime minister, allegedly by a mafia gang.

The main idea behind the paper is that if these countries want to join the EU, they should start meeting the Copenhagen criteria, which require prospective candidate countries to guarantee democracy, the rule of law and minority rights, as well as develop a market economy capable of coping with competitive pressures within the union.

For some Balkan experts, the Commission has not gone far enough. "It is all very well saying these countries will at some stage be able to join," said Gerald Knaus, director of the independent European Stability Initiative.

"The Commission is still being conservative in its attitude. It has refused to introduce a pre-accession strategy that would precisely help these countries meet the Copenhagen criteria and the acquis communautaire [the EU's battery of legislation]."

The paper also falls short of what Greece wants as president of the EU's rotating presidency. Athens has put the Balkans at the top of its foreign policy agenda, believing Europe's goal at bringing stability to the region will fail if it does not launch a pre-accession strategy capable of pulling the region of out its economic trough and corruption.

Note:  This story is no longer posted on the Internet.

Blair-Chirac quarrel rages on at EU summit

Elaine Sciolino/NYT The New York Times

BRUSSELS The battle within Europe sparked by the Iraq crisis raged on as President Jacques Chirac of France vowed Friday to oppose a British idea for a Security Council resolution that would give the United States and Britain the right to govern Iraq.

And on the second and final day of a summit meeting that brought together the 15 leaders of the European Union, Britain continued its verbal attack against France, while Germany announced that it would join France and Belgium - the countries most opposed to the war - in a summit meeting on how to strengthen Europe's military capability.

No one could remember a European summit meeting more tense - and surreal. The war with Iraq has exploded the myth of European unity and it intruded at every turn.

As the European leaders proclaimed their commitment to open their energy markets, create jobs, institute a single air-traffic control zone and make Europe the most competitive economy in the world, dozens of television screens mounted throughout the room carried live news of the war.

The disconnect underscored an important point: Europe may be able to come together on issues affecting its members' economies, but it is more divided than ever on how to defend itself and project power around the world.

The sharpest fissure was between Britain and France. Rejecting an idea floated by Prime Minister Tony Blair earlier in the day for a resolution to give international authority to a new administration in Iraq, Chirac said at a news conference, "This idea of a resolution seems to me to be a way of authorizing military intervention after the fact, and so is not, from my point of view, fitting in the current situation."

He added, "France will not accept a resolution tending to legitimize the military intervention" and giving the Americans and the British "powers over the administration of Iraq."

Blair, in an earlier news conference here, said that there was general agreement between Europe and the United States that "it is important" to have a new Security Council resolution, not just to address the potential humanitarian crisis in Iraq but also to authorize what he called the "post-Saddam civil authority" in Iraq. The Bush administration has indicated that it plans to bypass the United Nations and administer Iraq itself.

Chirac's uncompromising stance is certain to deepen the sentiment in both the United States and Britain that the French president sabotaged the campaign in the United Nations for a resolution that would have endorsed the American-led war in Iraq. It was also puzzling. There is no resolution for either the governance or the reconstruction of Iraq on the table, and he could have easily dodged reporters' questions by saying that such planning was hypothetical while war raged.

Chirac said that the United Nations was the only body that could take responsibility for rebuilding Iraq, underscoring that he is willing to consider some sort of resolution, but not one that would seem to legitimize the war or give the United States and Britain exceptional powers. "Whatever the results of the military operation," Chirac said, Iraq "must be rebuilt, and for that there is just one forum - the United Nations."

The leaders wrapped up their summit meeting with a 36-page declaration that pledged to forge creative strategies to combat the global economic slowdown. Still, not all of the insults could be held back. Britain, which has committed 45,000 troops to the U.S.-led Iraqi campaign, continued to hurl accusations that France had sabotaged an effort to win international approval of the war at the United Nations.

Britain's foreign secretary, Jack Straw, refused to back off his verbal assault on France, which drew an angry protest from his French counterpart. "I stand by the words I have used," Straw told British reporters. "I don't regret the fact that we have argued."

Asked about a proposal by France, Germany and Belgium to hold their own defense summit meeting, Denis McShane, Britain's senior official on Europe, told French reporters in flawless French, "The idea of a European defense based on Belgium and without England - I wonder how serious this could be." Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder of Germany told reporters that the summit meeting would help accelerate the process of forging a common European security policy. But he suggested that all 15 European Union leaders and the 10 additional countries that are poised to join the organization would be invited, saying, "We should not in any way exclude anyone from European defense."

Blair refused to be drawn into the intra-European fight, but he did not try to hide the divisions either, telling reporters that there was "no point dwelling" on the differences between France and Britain.

He said that Chirac had sent him a personal note expressing condolences for the death of eight British soldiers killed Thursday night in a helicopter crash in Kuwait.

Without directly criticizing the plan by three member countries to meet on defense, he stressed the importance for Europe as a whole to reach agreement on a common foreign and defense policy and lamented the fact that the Iraq crisis had exposed the "fault line" in Europe's strategic relationship with the United States.

http://www.iht.com/articles/90687.htm

Commission agrees on strategy for enlarged EU budget

euobserver

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The European Commission on Wednesday adopted its Annual Policy Strategy Decisions for 2004, which will lay the ground for the preparation of the preliminary draft budget for an enlarged EU of 25.

"This is going to be a budget which up to the end of April will apply to the EU 15, and after up to 25 states," Budget Commissioner Michaele Schreyer said.

From 1 May 2004 onwards, the new EU states will participate in all programmes funded by the European budget. They are expected to have implemented the whole of EU legislation. "These are the challenges awaiting the EU in 2004 and this is our central priority," said Ms Schreyer.

The Commission will ask the Budgetary Authority for 780 posts to manage the accession process. This is in addition to the 500 auxiliary posts granted by the Budgetary Authority for 2003.

In total, the 2004 budget in commitment appropriations could equal to around 111,000 million euro, of which 11,000 million euro will be dedicated to enlargement.

From 2004 to 2006, pre-accession funds to Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey will increase. The Commission also plans added support to the Mediterranean and the Balkan region.

An additional 45.7 million euro are intended to enhance the EU's capacity to respond to oil pollution disasters in the EU, triggered after the Prestige oil-tanker disaster which sank off the Spanish coast last November.

Commission President Romano Prodi will present the Annual Policy Strategy to the European Parliament on 11 March where it will be debated in plenary.

Press Release European Commission

Written by Sharon Spiteri
Edited by Honor Mahony

http://www.euobserver.com/index.phtml?sid=9&aid=9598

EU threatens sanctions against US

euobserver

The World Trade Organisation supports the EU's claims that certain tax breaks awarded to US companies are unfair.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The European Commission announced on Wednesday that it has fine-tuned four billion dollars worth of sanctions on American products which it may be willing to impose if the US Congress does not repeal tax laws that currently break trade rules.

The announcement comes after the World Trade Organisation (WTO) supported the EU's claim that certain tax breaks for US companies abroad were unfair and that the EU had the right to seek compensation to the order of US$4 billion.

The European Commision however is stressing that it does not want to impose sanctions but would rather see the law in question changed. "This is the latest step in along procedure,"a Commission spokesperson told journalists.

Products that potentially could be hit have not yet been named publicly as EU states have to give their stamp of approval. It is believed that soyabeans and aluminium may be on the list of products which may be subject to up to 100 percent tariffs.

Meanwhile in Washington, US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick told a House of Representatives committee: "I believe the EU will hold off on retaliation, but I don't know for how long."

According to reports in the Washington Post Mr Zoellick also warned the committee that they will need to take action. "My bottom line is that we can't make this go away. We have got to get this fixed,'' he said.

The EU did not give any concrete deadlines for the US to change the tax laws but said it expects "swift results."

Written by Andrew Beatty
Edited by Nicola Smith

http://www.euobserver.com/index.phtml?print=true&sid=24&aid=9512

The European Union and the Palestinian Authority

EU Observer
Written by Rachel Ehrenfeld
Edited by Andrew Beatty

EUOBSERVER / DEBATE - The European Union’s inability to join the US in its war on terrorist regimes is nothing new - it has funded, and continues to fund Palestinian terrorism, despite overwhelming evidence provided by the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) own documents that they use the money, given to it as part of aid, to pay for terror.

On 2 February, 170 members of the European Parliament demanding accountability, despite Commissioner Chris Patten’s strong objection, signed a petition to open a separate parliamentarian investigation into the EU’s aid to the PA. The following day the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) announced that it has begun an external investigation "in relation to allegations of misuse of funds donated by the European Union in the context of EU budgetary support to the Palestinian Authority."

What has taken OLAF so long? The PA’s own documents demonstrate how the PA and Arafat used EU funds to pay for terrorism were discovered by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) and have been available for over a year.

Demand of full parliamentary investigation
Volumes of the Palestinian Authority’s own documents, including many graced by Yasser Arafat’s own signature, ordering the Palestinian Ministry of Finance – the recipient of hundreds of millions of dollars in EU budgetary aid, and additional 950 million euro in humanitarian aid just for the year 2002 – to pay members of the al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade for killing Israeli citizens, or to pay for the procurement of explosives and illegal weapons.

These and similar documents motivated Ilke Schroeder (MEP, GUE/NGL, Germany) and a small group of like-minded ethically conscious European Parliamentarians to demand a full parliamentary investigation.

Finally, on February 13, the Conference of Presidents of the European Parliament parties decided that instead of a full investigation, setting up a "Working Group" to look into the matter is enough. This "Working Group" is made up of the very same members of the Budgetary and Foreign Affairs Committees who were supposed to monitor how the PA was spending the EU’s tax payers’ money.

Demands for accountability
EU donations to the PA since the Oslo Accords included demands for accountability. Similar demands have been attached to the EU’s direct budgetary assistance since the PA began attacking Israel in September 2000. However, despite EU claims to the contrary, no real effort to monitor how the money it provided to the PA was spent has ever taken place.

The EU claims that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) monitors the PA budget, and European Commissioner for External Affairs Chris Patten maintains that "EU assistance has clear conditions attached to it and is closely monitored… by the IMF at the Commission's request." His office has also stated that, " the IMF conducts a close review of monthly fiscal information covering the whole of the PA budget, including …the wage bill".

In stark contrast however, IMF staff members have contradicted Patten’s claim on several occasions; the Director of the IMF’s Middle Eastern Department, George T. Abed, acknowledged on September 2002 that "with weak institutions and a budget of nearly 1 billion dollars, there has, no doubt, been some abuse. And he added that even "the Palestinian Legislative Council itself has complained about this," he said, and finally that "the IMF does not and cannot control downstream spending by the various Palestinian agencies." Nevertheless, the IMF, much like the EU does not want to be held accountable: "This matter remains between the Palestinian Authority and the donors," said Abed.

EU’s lack of accountability and transparency
The EU has been arguing that it will only accept the fact that the money it sends has been funding terrorism if there are mechanisms to identify how each individual Euro is spent.

Indeed, money is fungible; but since the EU gave direct funding toward PA salaries, and additional money to the PA Ministry of Finance for various projects; and since the PA’s own records prove that it used the Ministry of Finance to pay for terror activities, what other evidence in needed to show that the PA allocated money received from the EU to fund terrorism?

In June 2002, after international condemnation of the PA’s corruption, Yasser Arafat appointed a new Minster of Finance, Salam Fayyad a former IMF official who, assisted by outside experts, began an attempt to overhaul the corrupt system.

As a result, Israel agreed to renew its transfer of payments for Palestinian tax funds, which it had withheld fearing the money will go to fund terrorism. This money, unlike the EU’s, is being monitored by a special group of accountants brought in by the US.

However, there are already reports that Arafat ignores and circumvents Fayyad, by ordering the Ministry of Finance to pay to known terrorists. Despite all this, the EU decided to continue its financial aid to the PA on the grounds that it is not convinced that Israel will continue to transfer the money to the PA.

This decision follows the EU’s unwillingness to account for the whereabouts of monies it gave to the Palestinians. This reaction is in line with the EU’s lack of accountability and transparency. After all it "can only guarantee that 5% of taxpayers’ money - over 101 billion euro - of its budget is being spent properly," according to the EU’s Court of Auditors last November.

Instead of coming clean, the EU Commission headed by Patten, and the Conference of Presidents thought it was better to sweep the investigation under the carpet. Only this time the red on the carpet is the blood of innocent civilians.

DR RACHEL EHRENFELD - is the Director of the NYC based American Center for Democracy and the author of "Narcoterrorism" and "Evil Money" as well as the forthcoming "Funding Evil". She contributes regularly to the Wall Street Journal and the National Review.

http://www.euobserver.com/index.phtml?sid=9&aid=9440

Historical goodbye to the European nations

EU Observer

EUOBSERVER / DEBATE - Thursday 6 February became another turning point in European history. It was the date where the Praesidium for the EU Convention published the first 15 finalised articles to a real European constitution.

They had long and hard discussions in secret meetings in the Praesidium. Particularly the representatives of the European Parliament and Commission wanted to go even further on the path towards building a new European nation state.

They have lost any connection to the electorate in this world because what is already in the draft is far more than the electorates will accept in most countries.

From treaty to constitution
In the beginning they talked about a "constitutional treaty". Now, the word constitution is mentioned 32 times in 15 articles. The revolution has passed.

There is now consensus about having in common what is normally kept for the nation states: common playing rules for a people and their governance, a constitution.

Now we will have the common state constitution without a European people.
The European state constitution shall be organised on a "federal basis", says article 1. But there is no clear division of powers between the participating states and the federal level.

The proposed construction is in reality a unitary state like France. There will still be a lot of rudiments from the period of nation states, particularly different representations in the United Nations, just like the Soviet Union for many years had different representatives for some of the participating Soviet states. But there is only one answer to the crucial question: Who decides if there is a disagreement between a participating state and the federation.

The one and only answer is in all questions: the federation.

The federation decides
Even a regulation decided by some civil servants behind closed doors late night prevails over all national constitutions in the EU and can never be amended by one of the previous European peoples alone.

At a later date there might be a possibility for leaving the new European state, but the first 15 articles do not even contain the federal principle of division of powers between the two levels of government.

Historic hello to the European super state
The important sentence is art. 9: "The Constitution and law adopted by the Union Institutions in exercising competences conferred on it by the Constitution shall have primacy over the law of the Member States". Read it once more: This sentence marks the historic good bye to the European nation state and the hello to the European super state.

Any conflict between the two levels of government has to accept the primacy of community law. The EU Court may decide that the legislative bodies in Brussels have taken a decision against the catholic principle of subsidiarity. But there is no constitutional court in Germany or a High Court in Denmark who will be allowed to judge against the primacy of community law.

China also respects Tibetan identity
The constitution will respect the national identities¸ but not the legislative bodies and the democratic say of the peoples in the member states. I am sure China also respects Tibetan identity.

Democracy is not only identity. Democracy is the right to decide, and the right to take a new decision after new elections to your parliament, and to my parliament which I share with my people as you share yours with your people.

We may be one people one day, after maybe hundred years. Federalists may have their dreams about a common democracy for a common people. I am not an anti-federalist. I think federalism may be good for Germany, Switzerland and the USA.

European people is lacking
I am Euro-realist because there is no European people available for a European democracy. And I am strongly against the draft constitution because the European people is lacking - and because there is still no democracy in the draft constitution. It may come, but most probably the next articles will not move the decision making in Brussels from civil servants and ministers to the elected representatives of the European peoples.

More centralised than the US
The draft constitution is more centralised than the constitution of the United States. In the EU there shall also be mixed competences for foreign policy and defence, Justice and Home affaires, social policy and Labour law, energy and - public health. In Denmark public health is with the regions.

Now the EU shall be able to make laws which prevails over any decision by a region or a nation state. For the nation states the draft constitution allows national legislation for employment, industry, education, vocational training and youth, culture, sport and protection against disasters.
Thank you.

Nothing is hidden
But even here every national decision has to respect the common horizontal fundamental principles. No national "discrimination" which means that the federal level decides over the number of foreign players in the previous national foot ball teams. We may increase employment but not through our own economic policy since it sill also be for common co-ordination. We may protect ourselves against disasters but the health system will be for private enterprise in the common market under the primacy of EU law. We will be provinces, without a democratic say, if we take that draft constitution.

The best to be said about it is that is a clear text. I praised Mr Giscard yesterday both in the plenary of the Convention and in the corridor for a very good text, professionally.
Nothing is hidden. Everything is - now - public and clear.

Read it, and organise the democratic movements against the EU state constitution.

JENS-PETER BONDE - Danish member of the European Parliament for the EU sceptical June Movement and representing the Parliament in the European Convention. President of the SOS Democracy intergroup and the EDD group in the European Parliament and author of 40 books about European integration.

Written by Jens-Peter Bonde
Edited by Andrew Beatty

http://www.euobserver.com/index.phtml?aid=9295

EU calls on Sharon to move toward peace

EU Observer

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The Union's high representative for foreign policy, Javier Solana has urged the recently re-elected Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, to create a coalition government focussed on peace.

In a statement made before the European Parliament on Wednesday Mr Solana congratulated Mr Sharon on his election victory and rebutted claims that in voting for Mr Sharon's hard-line Likud party Israelis had demonstrated that they have lost faith in peace.

The high representative instead sought to interpret the elections as sign that Israelis "have lost faith in the mechanisms for arriving at that peace" and to this end urged the new government to move quickly towards adopting and implementing the 'road map' for peace informally adopted in December by the Quartet of Russia the EU, US and UN.

Members of the previous Likud government and Mr Sharon himself had been keen to sideline the EU insisting that it was not an honest broker.

Irked by this aside, but also by its ramifications, many in Brussels viewed Israeli's position as a means by which Israel could frustrate the efforts of the Quartet without coming into direct confrontation with the US.

Solana: Road map must be quickly implemented
After US insistence, the Quartet agreed in December to informally adopt the road map but not to publish it before the Israeli elections, the EU has now insisted that it be made public as soon as possible.

"There are no good reasons for further delay, and plenty of good reasons for moving ahead" asserted Mr Solana.

Formal adoption of the Quartet's road map coupled with political pressure from the US to accept the peace deal - expected to be particularly acute as they seek to stem Arab radicalisation resulting from the ultimatum delivered to Iraq - will mean that it will be more difficult Israel to play on splits within the four-strong body.

EU leaders are becoming increasingly vocal in their calls for the EU's role in staving off the collapse of the Palestinian authority as its primary donor and also as the largest donor of non-military aid to the Middle East peace process as a whole.

Responding to Mr Solana's address Enrique Barón Crespo, leader of the Party of European Socialists - the second largest group in the European Parliament - demanded that Mr Sharon must "stop ignoring Europe."

In response to congratulations from Commission President Romano Prodi, Mr Sharon indicated that the search for a settlement that would bring peace and stability to the region was his top priority. He said he would work to that end in consultation with the United States without undervaluing the role Europe could play and its constructive contribution to the process, according to the Commission.

Written by Andrew Beatty
Edited by Nicola Smith

http://www.euobserver.com/index.phtml?sid=9&aid=9188

EU launches Police Mission in Bosnia & Herzegovina

On January 15th 2003, the European Union Police Mission (EUPM) will be officially inaugurated. The three-year European Union Police Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) is the EU's first civilian crisis management operation under the European Common Foreign and Security respectively Defence Policy (CFSP/ESDP). It will make a vital contribution towards establishing the rule of law in Bosnia and Herzegovina, upon which its future as a modern European country depends. Commissioner for External Relations, Chris Patten said "We are helping the countries of the Western Balkans build honest, uncorrupt institutions brick by brick. Building a strong police service in Bosnia and Herzegovina, creating a more effective judiciary and assisting the fight against organised crime are priorities if BiH is to look forward to a stable future, and a closer relationship with the EU. It is also an essential prerequisite for attracting foreign investment and strengthening the BiH economy."

The aim of the EUPM is to help the authorities of BiH develop their police forces to the highest European and international standards through monitoring, mentoring and inspecting the management and operations of the police. International police and civilian experts will be present alongside mid- and senior-level BiH police officials. The EU Police Commissioner can recommend, if necessary, that non-compliant police officers be removed from office.

The total costs of the mission per year amount to €38m. The Community budget funded the set-up costs (€14m). The Community budget will pay €20m yearly running costs while the Member States cover €18m through the secondment of staff.(1)

The European Commission services administering the CFSP budget are actively supporting the Mission. Although the EUPM is an independent body, it is directly linked to the Commission via a contract between Mr. Sven Frederiksen as Head of EUPM and the Commission services, providing Mr. Frederiksen with the required operational budgetary means. The EUPM will receive advice and support from the Commission regarding legal, administrative and financial questions, including procurement matters regarding the best use of operational funds from the EC budget.

The EUPM will build on the work of the UN's International Police Task Force. More than 30 countries, including EU Member States and partners, are contributing personnel to the mission, comprising 500 police officers and more than 300 international civilian and local staff.(2)

Rule of Law in BiH

Supporting and consolidating the rule of law in BiH is a priority for the EU. The EUPM complements other elements of this strategy within the framework of the Stabilisation and Association Process.(3)

The EU is a leading player in the implementation of Rule of Law in BiH and is the major contributor. In the period 1996 - 2004 the a total of €182.42m will be spent from the Community budget in this field under the CARDS(4) programme, supporting reforms in the following areas:

Administration of Justice (€47.4m up to 2004): The EU is the main contributor to the justice and prosecution reform and has financed or co-financed, the Independent Judicial Commission, and the High Judicial and Prosecutorial Councils, as well as training of prosecutors.
Police (€14.89m up to 2003): Reform of the BiH Police, guided by the EU Police Mission, including training, technical assistance, restructuring of the police force and some supply of equipment. Special attention will be given to the fight against organised crime.
Asylum and Migration (€9m 2002-2004): The EU is the major donor supporting, inter alia, a database for aliens, a possible future detention centre for illegal migrants, and the setting up of asylum and migration management capacities.
Taxes and Customs (€71.65 up to 2004): EU assistance to administrative capacity building to help the fight against fraud, corruption and organised crime. As a result BiH benefits from improved levels of compliance, revenue collection and exposure of large-scale tax and customs fraud. The Customs and Fiscal Assistance Office is also advising High Representative Lord Ashdown on the implementation of a unified customs service for BiH. This should result in further efficiency gains and further reductions in fraud.

http://europa.eu.int/comm/external_relations/see/news/ip03_44.htm

Top military official predicts EU merge with NATO

EU Observer

The European pillar in NATO and European security and defence policy (ESDP) will be merged, according to Gustav Hägglund, chairman of the Military Committee of the European Union.

Speaking at the University of Helsinki, the European Union's highest military official added that if Finland does not decide in favour of NATO membership by the end of this decade it really makes no difference. By that time EU security and defence policy and the European pillar in NATO will all be the same.

American worries
Mr Hägglund expressed deep concern about America neglecting the importance of NATO and Europe. He referred to the new security strategy presented by US President, George Bush, in September which barely mentioned NATO and Europe. "The new goal for Europe is to maintain the relevance of NATO in American security thinking", Mr Hägglund said.

The Finns are in the middle of a heated debate over whether to join NATO and give up their traditional neutrality. This could end up being decided by referendum.

Written by Lisbeth Kirk
Edited by Nicola Smith

http://www.euobserver.com/index.phtml?print=true&sid=13&aid=9048

EU starts security and defence missions in 2003

EUObserver

MALTA - 1 January 2003 will be an important milestone for the EU as it marks the start of its first operation under the European Security and Defence Policy – the EU Police Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Moreover, following a landmark agreement between NATO and the EU earlier this month, the Union will for the first time deploy its own soldiers in the Balkan republic of Macedonia possibly by February 2003, taking over the NATO "Amber Fox" peace-keeping mission.

The EU Police Mission (EUPM) will consist of around 900 staff members, 500 of which will be police officers, 50 International Civilian experts and more than 300 local staff. Both EU states and non-EU states will be contributing to this mission. The highest participatory level will be from the present 15 EU states, but there will also be contribution from 12 EU candidates (except Malta), Iceland, Switzerland, Norway, Russia and Ukraine.

Danish Sven Christian Frederiksen has been appointed head of the EU Police Mission.

This police mission will build on the IPTF (UN International Police Task Force)'s efforts over the past 7 years and is aimed to help the Bosnia and Herzegovina authorities develop local police forces that meet the highest European and international standards and to ensure that sustainable institutional structures are in place by the end of its mandate on 31 December 2005. The EUPM will do this through monitoring, mentoring and inspecting police managerial and operational capacities. The EUPM has no executive powers.

Agreement on financing reached last February
In February 2002, EU foreign ministers managed to reach an agreement on the financing of the EU police force, amidst concerns over the financial burden that it would impose on the EU. The EU will only pay expenses related to transport and communication, while the salaries of each officer will have to be paid by the individual countries.

"We will see for the first time our European colours adorn the national uniforms of our police officers in a mission on the ground. It is a strong symbol of the collective will of Europeans to act jointly in this key task of consolidating stability and security in our continent," the Council Secretary General Javier Solana said.

Mention of military operations
The Copenhagen Summit on the 12-13 December, went one step further when confirming the Union’s "readiness to take over the military operation" in FYROM as soon as possible in consultation with NATO. So far the EU tasks have been defined as peacekeeping and crises management, however in Copenhagen the texts for the first time mention directly "military operations".

The European Council also indicated the Union's willingness to lead a military operation in Bosnia following SFOR (a stabilisation force run by the Alliance), and invited Javier Solana and the future EU Presidency to begin consultations to that end with the authorities in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the High Representative Lord Ashdown, NATO and other international players and to report to the Council in February.

Written by Sharon Spiteri
Edited by Lisbeth Kirk

http://www.euobserver.com/index.phtml?sid=9&aid=8885

EU welcomes 10 new countries in historic summit

EU Observer

EUOBSERVER / COPERHAGEN - The Copenhagen Summit turned out to be the momentous occasion that was predicted. EU heads of state and government agreed to invite all ten candidate countries to become members of the Union.

Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovenia and Slovakia are all set to join the EU in May 2004.

Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Danish premier and head of the EU presidency, spoke of "closing one of the darkest chapters in European history and opening a new one." Of the ten new members, eight were behind the old Iron Curtain and part of the old Soviet Bloc.

Other leaders were similarly effusive. British prime minister Tony Blair said that the decision was one of "enormous importance" and that it was "a moment we can be very proud of." Jacques Chirac, the French president said it was a "very emotional moment" while German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said it was a "big day for Europe."

The decision at the Copenhagen Summit comes almost a decade after the candidate countries were told the political conditions for starting negotiations. These conditions are known as the Copenhagen criteria and focus on democracy, human rights and economic stability. Several politicians remarked on the fact that just a short time ago in history, this possibility would have been unthinkable.

But the statements of EU leaders on the historic nature of the occasion followed a less than harmonious day of negotiation. Up until the last minute, several candidate countries, particularly Poland, were holding out for a better financial deal with the EU. This led Mr Rasmussen to remark ruefully that he had "got to know some prime ministers really well."

In the end a deal on the controversial package was reached - with Poland accepting what the EU offered. The Polish prime minister, Leszek Miller, spoke of a day of "tough and sometimes unusually dramatic negotiations," but he added that all of Poland's demands had been met. The chief negotiator for Hungary was more blunt: this is "not excellent, but this is ok," said Endre Juhasz. In another room Gerhard Schroeder, was happily stressing the fact that the current member states had stayed well under the financial ceiling agreed in Berlin in 1999.

The next steps are to draw up the accession treaty for the candidate countries. This will be signed in Athens, under the Greek presidency, on April 16 2003. "I will be the first in June to visit 24 capitals in my tour des capitales," said Greek premier Costas Smitis. Assuming all countries ratify the treaty, they will join in May 2004.

Written by Honor Mahony
Edited by Nicola Smith

http://www.euobserver.com/index.phtml?print=true&sid=9&aid=8757

A Wider Europe - A Proximity Policy as the key to stability

Speech by Romano Prodi, President of the European Commission

"Peace, Security And Stability International Dialogue and the Role of the EU" Sixth ECSA-World Conference. Jean Monnet Project, Brussels, 5-6 December 2002, SPEECH/02/619

Ladies and gentlemen,

Changing times impose greater responsibilities, and the responsibilities of the European Union at this time could not be weightier. We are striving to keep pace with a world in flux that is opening up new opportunities but also throwing up new challenges.

The political map of the European continent will be redrawn in less than two years. Next week, at Copenhagen, we shall take a historic step and invite up to ten new members to join our Union. This decision will give Europe a new dimension and impose on us new responsibilities.

This sixth World Conference of the European Community Studies Association has given us an opportunity to discuss in depth peace, security and stability-related issues. All the participants here are aware of the great responsibility represented by the half a billion people who will be living in the EU after 2007.

These 500 million people will not settle for less security than the citizens of the present Union of Fifteen. They want the same protection against organised crime and international terrorism as present members. And they want the benefits that led them to choose the EU as their political haven: stability, prosperity, solidarity, democracy and freedom.

If we are to keep pace with this changing world and shoulder our growing global responsibilities, we, as the Union, have to take the necessary measures. If we want to satisfy the rising expectations and hopes of countries abroad and the peoples of Europe, we have to become a real global player. We are only beginning to act as one.

The Balkans, Afghanistan and the Middle East are only three examples of the challenges facing the world community. The EU has to play its part in dealing with them.

The EU's foreign policy must be brought up to speed. It must be expressed with one voice and vested with the necessary instruments. There is no other way to guarantee our security in the long term.

The Commission has just presented its second communication to the Convention. We made detailed proposals for reform of EU structures to make sure that they continue to work properly. And we also pleaded for a strong Commission, which, as guardian of the community interest, will strengthen the Union.

The Community method will be valuable in the field of foreign relations too.

The EU has much to do yet if it wants to make an effective contribution to international security.

Let me now deal in more detail with the central item on this conference's agenda: stability. Lasting and sustainable stability in the European region, has been the crowning achievement of the European Union. This is what we do best, if I may say so.

We are projecting stability beyond the borders of the current candidate countries, which are already sharing in our prosperity. We should recognise that this success creates legitimate expectations in the EU's future neighbours which, in turn, wish to reap benefits from the current enlargement.

Is our present neighbourhood policy well-defined enough to meet the challenges thrown up by enlargement? I want to focus on this issue because I think we have not yet got to grips with the underlying problem. Today I am going to talk about the need for a new political perspective on relations with our southern and eastern neighbours. My aim is giving them incentives, injecting a new dynamic in existing processes and developing an open and evolving partnership. This is what we call our proximity policy, a policy based on mutual benefits and obligations, which is a substantial contribution by the EU to global governance.

Let me reiterate. The current enlargement is the greatest contribution to sustainable stability and security on the European continent that the EU ever made. It is one of the most successful and impressive political transformations of the twentieth century. And all this has been achieved in a less than a decade.

This achievement is the fruit of a decision taken by the EU in 1993 and the consistent efforts of the Union and the candidate countries ever since. The initial decision gave these countries hope for the future.

By holding up the goal of membership we enabled these governments to implement the necessary reforms. Only this prospect sustained the reformers in their efforts to overcome nationalist and other resistance and fears of change and modernisation.

Such hope is a strange thing. It has much in common with the trust people have in you. It determines how you look at people or events. How does a country envision its future when it is lacking direction or confidence? Hope gives direction and so inspires confidence. But the future must be attractive to inspire hope.

The EU looks certain to remain a pole of attraction for its neighbours. For many of the countries in our future "backyard" the EU is the only prospect. Many of these countries have already received a formal undertaking from the Union.

The integration of the Balkans into the European Union will complete the unification of the continent, and we have held out this prospect to them. Although there is still a long way to go, the Balkans belong to Europe. The process of integrating them will create a sort of bridge between enlargement and neighbourhood policy.

Each enlargement brings us new neighbours. In the past many of these neighbours ended up becoming candidates for accession themselves.

I do not deny that this process has worked very well. But we cannot go on enlarging forever. We cannot water down the European political project and turn the European Union into just a free trade area on a continental scale.

We need a debate in Europe to decide where the limits of Europe lie and prevent these limits being determined by others. We also have to admit that currently we could not convince our citizens of the need to extend the EU's borders still further east.

It is a question of responsibility: We have to develop a blueprint for future action to deal with a problem stemming directly from the success of enlargement.

What have we to offer our new neighbours? What prospects can we hold out to them? Where does Europe end? These are the questions we have to answer. The European public is calling for such a debate. I know: This debate will heat up after the accession of new members. Therefore it is our duty to start finding some answers.

I want to be perfectly clear on this point: Article 49 of the Treaty on European Union provides that any European State which respects the fundamental principles of the Union can apply for membership.

So whatever our proximity policy is or will be, no European state that complies with the Copenhagen criteria we established in 1993 will be denied this prospect.

But to clear up any doubt, let me also say this. Holding out such a prospect to a country does not mean promising this country that it will definitely join.

Accession is not the only game in town. Remember that enlargement does not benefit only present and future members. Future neighbours will benefit too.

Being a neighbour of the EU means better market opportunities in a more stable economic and political environment. In many cases, for instance, future trade tariffs will be lower than the existing ones for the candidate countries.

But enlargement will also create new challenges for our neighbours. Repositioning existing markets may well pose problems. We need to find solutions that will allow us to share the advantages of enlargement with our neighbours. This calls for a comprehensive approach to our neighbours.

The geographical scope of this approach is our neighbourhood in the literal sense of the word, our backyard. It includes our future eastern neighbours and the whole Mediterranean area, as I recently explained in Louvain when I spoke on "Europe and the Mediterranean -- time for action."

I want to see a "ring of friends" surrounding the Union and its closest European neighbours, from Morocco to Russia and the Black Sea.

This encircling band of friendly countries will be diverse. The quality of our relations with them will largely depend on their performance and the political will on either side. Of course, geography will play a role too.

It is the Commission's responsibility to come up with a way of improving relations with all these countries.

Let me try to explain what model we should follow. I admit that many of the elements which come to my mind are taken from the enlargement process. What struck me about that process is that just the prospect of accession has brought benefits to the central and eastern European countries.

You can improve the climate for direct investment without being a member of the EU. You can align your legislation on the EU's without being a member. You can have limited or even unlimited access top the internal market without being a member. You can tighten budget controls and boost economic growth without being a member.

But--and this is an important but--these benefits can only be obtained if and when the process is well structured, when the goals are well defined and the framework is legally and politically binding. And only if the two sides are clear about the mutual advantages and the mutual obligations.

The goal of accession is certainly the most powerful stimulus for reform we can think of. But why should a less ambitious goal not have some effect? A substantive and workable concept of proximity would have a positive effect.

The existing and well functioning instruments of the EU's policy for its neighbours are the foundations for any new approach. We should be able to combine this proposal with the variety of existing partnership, cooperation, association and stabilisation agreements. But we must also better exploit their potential and build on this basis.

Let me concentrate on the question of what political perspective would best extend the area of stability without immediate enlargement of the Union.

We have to be prepared to offer more than partnership and less than membership, without precluding the latter. So what would a proximity policy do for our old and new neighbours look like?

It must be attractive. It must unlock new prospects and create an open and dynamic framework. If you embark on fundamental transformations of your country's society and economy, you want to know what the rewards will be.

It must motivate our partners to cooperate more closely with the EU. The closer this cooperation, the better it will be for the EU and its neighbours in terms of stability, security and prosperity, and the greater the mutual benefits will be.

It must be dynamic and process-oriented. It should therefore be based on a structured, step-by-step approach. Progress is possible only on the basis of mutual obligations and the ability of each partner to carry out its commitments.

We need to set benchmarks to measure what we expect our neighbours to do in order to advance from one stage to another. We might even consider some kind of "Copenhagen proximity criteria". Progress cannot be made unless the countries concerned take adequate measures to adopt the relevant acquis. The benefits would be directly felt. As would absence of any progress.

A proximity policy would not start with the promise of membership and it would not exclude eventual membership. This would do away with the problem of having to say "yes" or "no" to a country applying for membership at too early a stage.

I can imagine what might be the first question that comes to your mind. What is attractive about such an offer? Where's the beef? The answer is simple. But to make it work will take time and effort.

On other occasions I have already referred to this concept, which I described as "sharing everything with the Union but institutions". The aim is to extend to this neighbouring region a set of principles, values and standards which define the very essence of the European Union.

The centrepiece of this proposal is a common market embracing the EU and its partners: it would offer a single market, free trade, open investment regime, approximation of legislation, interconnection of networks and the use of the euro as a reserve and reference currency in our bilateral transactions.

As the Union is more than a common market there are other dimensions to be included, too:

If we have common goals, we must also be ready to deal with common threats, such as crime, terrorism, illegal migration and environmental challenges.

We must act together to put an end to the regional conflicts on our continent.

We have to make sure that our common border is not a barrier to cultural exchanges or regional cooperation in the period when there cannot be completely free movement of people and labour.

Let me come back to the question as to whether we need new instruments or structures to create this new political impetus. I am normally cautious about setting up new structures if your aims can be achieved with existing ones.

The idea of "sharing everything but institutions" itself applies to existing EU institutions. But this does not exclude the possibility of developing a new structures with our neighbours at a later stage, if necessary.

I am thinking of innovative concepts such as institutions co-owned by the partners: The Euro-Mediterranean Bank and the Foundation for Dialogue between Cultures and Civilisations might be cited as examples here; both were conceived as tools to strengthen an existing process, not as an alternative to it.

I would also like to launch a new political dialogue on the basis of "shared principles and values", making full use of all the potential offered by our common external policies.

Consider, for instance, policies on the environment, transport, research, education and culture, to mention but a few. New forms of assistance and cooperation based on the social cohesion model. Or new joint measures to tackle problems we all have at our borders.

Let me try to explain how the concept of sharing everything but institutions should be understood: The example I have in mind is the proposal I made to Russia:

A Common European Economic Space could provide a framework in which we could ultimately share everything but institutions. Though it will obviously not be built in a day. Clearly each partner would need to consider whether they are ready and able to adopt our standards and legislative models. However, this is only a first attempt to build something new that we can share with our neighbours to our mutual benefit.

A European-Russian High Level Group is exploring the possible building blocks of such a Common Economic Space: standards, customs, financial services, transport, industry and telecommunications are just a few.

And we can point to an example of a working economic area which has all this, and more.

The European Economic Area, based on the EEA Agreement, brings together the EFTA countries and the European Union under a single roof: We share one single market, which is governed by the same acquis communautaire. The single market entails all four freedoms: the free movement of persons, goods, services and capital. If a country has reached this level, it has come as close to the EU as it is possible to be without being a member.

I know this might take a long time for many countries. But it would help them to carry out the necessary reforms and take the right measures because they would have an objective to aim at. And it would clearly bring mutual benefits, and consequently mutual incentives, to both the Union and its neighbours.

The EEA model does not presuppose accession as a pre-requisite. But, as history shows, being member of the EEA does not exclude membership of the EU at a later date. To me this seems very attractive.

Of course, the situation of countries like Ukraine, Moldova and Belarus differs completely from that of Norway, say. Nevertheless, we should be prepared to offer them a reasonable degree of proximity that does predetermine the question of future membership in advance. Indeed, because their situation is very different and because much more time will be needed to reach a certain stage, it is worth seeing what we could learn from the way the EEA was set up and then using this experience as a model for integrated relations with our neighbours.

I feel that we need more time to develop this concept. We identified relations with our neighbours as a strategic objective of this Commission in February 2000. The job of the Commission is to seize this opportunity to find a comprehensive solution to the question of the Union's relations with its neighbours.

That is what I meant by "sharing everything but institutions."

In this wider Europe we cannot confine our action to ad hoc, bilateral initiatives. We cannot simply ignore what is happening beyond our borders. Neither can we solve problems with our new neighbours simply by letting them join the Union.

We are tolerant and open to dialogue, to coexistence and to cooperation. We have to assume our role as a global player. The development of a substantive proximity policy should be one of the first steps.

We need to institute a new and inclusive regional approach that would help keep and promote peace and foster stability and security throughout the continent, ultimately promoting the emergence of better global governance.

http://europa.eu.int/comm/external_relations/news/prodi/sp02_619.htm

Blair calls for EU to be given more power but plays down fears of 'superstate'

By Andrew Grice, Political Editor

Tony Blair will call tomorrow for the European Union to take on more powers to become a bigger force on the world stage, but will insist this does not entail a federal superstate.

In what aides describe as a landmark pro-European speech, the Prime Minister will argue that more majority voting will be needed to prevent gridlock in decision-making when the 15-nation bloc admits 10 new members in 2004.

Mr Blair will say Europe is at a crossroads as he sets out Britain's goals for the Convention, chaired by the former French President Valéry Giscard D'Estaing, which is drawing up a blueprint for the EU.

The Prime Minister's theme will be that the EU should take on a bigger role by being "democratised rather than centralised". He will say that the way to ensure democratic legitimacy is not to hand more power to Brussels but to increase the role of the European Council, which is composed of the leaders of the 15 EU members, and the Council of Ministers, which includes ministers from the member states.

The EU should not be seen as an alternative to nation states, but a way of enhancing the issues that countries handle themselves which can be done better by working together, he will say.

Mr Blair will call for the appointment of a powerful President of the European Council, who would become the EU's figurehead on the world stage and implement the decisions taken by the 15 leaders. He or she would, in effect, replace the current system of "musical chairs" where one country holds the rotating Presidency for six months.

After criticism of the plan by smaller EU countries, Mr Blair will insist that Britain is not trying to downgrade the European Commission or the European Parliament, saying Britain wants them to be strong and effective. For example, the Commission should have more powers to crack down on member states which do not obey the rules of the EU club.

A government source said: "We accept the need for greater integration and for Europe to do more through shared sovereignty. But the power must be rooted in the democratic institutions of the member states, so there is accountability through national governments and parliaments." Britain wants national MPs to play a bigger role in the EU, for example by ensuring decisions best taken by member states are devolved downwards while those best taken at a European level are passed upwards.

The Prime Minister will say that the governing treaty to be agreed in two years should extend majority voting to prevent the EU grinding to a halt.The veto would still apply to a number of crucial areas such as taxation, declaring war and amending treaties.

Although Mr Blair is not expected to address in detail the issue of the single currency, his pro-EU stance will cheer supporters of early British entry. The Prime Minister is said by aides to be determined to call a referendum before the next general election.

http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/story.jsp?story=356233

EU ready for Big Bang enlargement

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in Brussels

The European Union yesterday set a date for the Big Bang enlargement of 10 new countries on May 1, 2004, clearing the way for the reunification of East and West Europe.

In a gesture with far-reaching ramifications, EU foreign ministers also pledged to give the 10 mostly former Communist states a role as full participants in designing the future of Europe rather than presenting them with a fait accompli at the next treaty in 2004.

The move tilts the balance of power in the crucial treaty negotiations towards the British preference for a looser association of states, checking the ambitions of the more federalist EU powers.

Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, said it would be unthinkable to sideline the new states as the EU builds a new constitutional system that includes them.

"They've negotiated their membership in good faith. It seems only reasonable that every country that has a stake in the future of the union should have a stake in the IGC [treaty negotiations]," he said.

It was now almost certain that Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovenia, Slovakia, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Cyprus and Malta would join on schedule.

The decision to include the 10 in the treaty talks, with full veto power, was a humiliating blow to Giscard d'Estaing, who had insisted that the current 15 member states should retain a monopoly over the constitutional changes.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/11/19/wbang19.xml&sSheet=/news/2002/11/19/ixworld.html

EU Sets May Day 2004 as 'E-Day' for East Expansion

By Gareth Jones

BRUSSELS, Belgium (Reuters) - The European Union Monday set May 1, 2004 as "E-day," the date for the EU's historic eastern expansion into the ex-communist bloc.

Foreign ministers of the 15 current members also agreed in Brussels that the new members -- probably 10 in all -- will participate fully in the European Parliament elections in June 2004 and in a planned conference on a future EU constitution.

From May Day that year, the new members will also each have one commissioner sitting on the European Commission, the bloc's executive authority, overseeing areas of the EU administration.

"(We have chosen) May 1, 2004, because the ratification process will take some time," said Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller, alluding to the time needed by the parliaments of the existing member states to approve the accession treaty.

"It was too optimistic to try for January 1 because we might have had a situation where some countries had not got through the ratification process. National parliaments have a right to have time to ratify," Moeller told a news conference following the ministers' talks. Denmark currently chairs such meetings.

The 10 leading membership candidates -- Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia -- plan to wrap up their complex accession talks at a summit in Copenhagen on Dec. 12-13.

Skeptics say bringing in 10 more governments and 75 million relatively poor people into the 370 million-strong EU will cost it dear and render it unworkable. Others say healing Europe's Cold War divide will create a world-beating economic bloc.

The ratification process will begin after the member states and candidates have signed the accession treaty in Athens next April. All the candidates are expected to hold referendums during the course of 2003 on joining the wealthy bloc.

Monday's deal will take the total number of commissioners to 30 until Nov. 1, 2004, when a new EU executive takes office that will be streamlined back down to just 25 members.

GUARDED WELCOME

Previous EU enlargements have taken place on Jan. 1, but candidates said May 1 was acceptable under certain conditions.

"We can accept a later date on condition that we have equal status in the European Parliament elections and the Intergovernmental Conference (IGC) and that an adjustment is made in our contribution (to the EU budget)," Polish Foreign Minister Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz said.

The EU is due to hold an IGC in 2004 to finalize a new constitution for the enlarged Union that is designed to make it more transparent and efficient once its numbers have swollen.

"We could explain to our electorate that we lost four months (as EU members) but that we gained millions of euros," said Hungarian Foreign Minister Laszlo Kovacs, referring to money the candidates save by deferring their accession.

A May entry date should ease new members' cash flow, since they will receive most EU payments for the whole year but only contribute eight months' worth of dues into the budget.

EU Enlargement Commissioner Guenter Verheugen signaled that the Union would maintain a tough negotiating stance on the outstanding issues of farm subsidies and regional aid.

"There is flexibility in the negotiations, for example on production quotas ... and the budgetary contributions," he said.

But he said the EU would not budge on the overall sums available for the candidates or on the principle of phasing in direct payments to their farmers only gradually over a decade.

The candidates say this offer is unfair and discriminatory. The EU says they do not have the capacity to absorb the full amount of funds from day one and, besides, member states such as Britain and Germany want to phase out the subsidies altogether.

HINT AT COMPROMISE

Denmark, which holds the EU's rotating presidency, and the Commission will come up with final proposals on the outstanding issues, including direct payments, within a week.

Diplomats hinted that the EU might raise the starting point for direct payments to the candidates' farmers to 30 percent in year one of accession from a proposed level of 25 percent. But three years after enlargement, the level would still only be 35 percent of what current members get, one diplomat said.

Verheugen said the EU foreign ministers had backed the Commission's plans to increase aid to two other candidates, Bulgaria and Romania, which aim to join the bloc in 2007.

"On a per capita basis, Bulgaria and Romania will become the biggest recipients of EU financial support ever," he said.

Turkey, the 13th candidate, has yet to open negotiations due to concerns over its human rights record. But EU leaders might offer the only Muslim candidate a "date for a date" in Copenhagen -- that is, a date for opening talks, probably in 2003 or 2004, provided it continues with its reforms. (Additional reporting by Marcin Grajewski)

Note: This story is no longer posted on the Internet

EU official supports entry of Israel and Morocco into European Union

The Jerusalem Post Internet Staff

President of the European Union Commission, Romano Prodi, said Friday that he favors the entry of Israel into the EU.

In an interview with the Swedish News Agency, Prodi said that the EU is interested in increasing its membership with friendly nations and named Israel and Morocco as examples.

Earlier in the week Foreign Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi about the possibility of Israel one-day joining the Union.

Prodi also said that Russia would never be able to join the EU.

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Commission works on stronger role in future Europe

EU Observer
Press Articles Financial Times Der Standard
Written by Bettina Berg
Edited by Honor Mahony

The European Commission is trying to come with ideas to secure itself a stronger role in a future Europe. A working group especially set up by Romano Prodi is looking for alternatives to a president of the EU – elected for several years – something many member states support. One route being examined is for the Commission to try and make itself more democratically accountable so that the Council presidency post becomes superfluous, writes der Standard.

"The strengthening of the democratic legitimacy of the Commission president … would eliminate any real just justification for the creation of a Union president," says the paper.

The working group suggests that the member states should have the possibility to fire the Commission. At present, only the European Parliament has the right to sanction the Commission - but Mr. Prodi's proposal aims at making the College politically accountable in front of both the Parliament and member states' leaders. Under the new institutional set-up planned by Mr. Prodi's team, the election of the Commission president could also be changed.

At present the Commission's president is appointed by the member states with agreement of the Parliament. One option would be that Mr. Prodi’s successor could be selected by the MEPs and then confirmed by the heads of state and government. An argument is against this is that the institution would be politicized if it were to become politically responsible before the heads of state.

Another could be that the Commission president is selected by the Congress of Peoples - a gathering of MEPs and national parliamentarians first broached by Convention president Valéry Giscard d’Estaing. However, this idea has not gathered support among commissioners.

The election of the president of the EU is central to the debate on the future of Europe, currently taking place in the Convention. Mr. Prodi’s suggestions, which are due to be presented on Monday, could put him on direct collision course with Spain, France and UK, all strong supporters of a long-term council president. The commission president has himself already pointed out that he rejects such an EU president.

http://www.euobserver.com/index.phtml?aid=8339

EU could run from Moscow to Morocco

Jason Beattie Chief Political Correspondent

ROMANO Prodi, the president of the European Commission, has sketched out an ambitious plan for the next stage of European Union enlargement which could see the trading block run from Moscow to Morocco.

Mr. Prodi said yesterday he would like to see the EU surrounded by a "ring of friends" with whom it would share "everything but institutions". Among the areas he envisages could become common ground for such associate members would be free circulation of people, economic trading space and equal access to health care.

The massive expansion is viewed by the EU president as the logical step of the current enlargement programme which will see ten candidate countries, including Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary, join the union in 2004.

"My idea is to have a ring of friends from Russia to Morocco, including Mediterranean countries such as Israel and Egypt ... and to share with them everything but institutions," he said.

Mr. Prodi also set himself on a collision course with the Convention on the Future of Europe - a group charged with drawing up a blueprint for the EU post enlargement - by speaking out against the idea of appointing a long-term president.

Proposals to replace the rotating presidency, where leaders of individual member states hold the post for six months, have been gathering momentum.

The plan has been widely supported by Britain, Spain, Italy, France and the convention president, Valery Giscard d’Estaing, who believe the appointment of a president for three or five years would allow more strategic decision-making and greater consistency.

Tony Blair has been touted as a potential candidate for the title.

There was little attempt by Mr. Prodi to hide his anxiety that such a post would be a challenge to his authority. "The problem is to avoid having dual power," he said. "A double bureaucracy, a double executive power would be a disaster."

http://thescotsman.co.uk/index.cfm?id=1262542002

German President Stresses Need For E.U. Enlargement

Drudge Report

Madrid (dpa) - German President Johannes Rau Monday praised the enlargement of the European Union into eastern Europe as a ``historical duty and a necessity of solidarity''.

The process of European unification was in a ``decisive phase'', with enlargement and consolidation going together, Rau said in a speech at the royal palace in Madrid at the start of a three-day state visit to Spain.

Spain fears enlargement could slash some of the regional funds it receives from the E.U., but Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer indicated there was no need to worry.

Germany believed the E.U. needed an ``active policy'' for the strategically important Mediterranean region, Fischer said at a press conference in Madrid earlier in the day.

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Next: 'United States of Europe'

Carl Limbacher and NewsMax.com Staff

That new blueprint for a European constitution has sparked British opposition because of its proposal to rename the European Union as the "United States of Europe."

The outline document, published by former French president Valery Giscard d'Estaing, suggests that all Europeans should be given the right to citizenship of the EU as well as their member states.

Expect the scheme to increase Europe's rampant anti-Americanism and socialism.

However, Peter Hain, Great Britain's representative on the convention, told BBC that dual citizenship was "not something we would go along with," and he opposed the proposed United States of Europe.

The blueprint "has been billed as a 'skeleton' constitution because it only sets out a framework, listing 46 articles and going into little detail. But changes that could be ushered in include the creation of a powerful new president of the EU who would report to national leaders, a congress of national and European parliamentarians, and an exit clause to allow countries to quit the EU," the Independent newspaper reported in London.

Sure it does. Look what happened when states tried to leave the U.S.

The text even outlines plans to give the EU the power to sign treaties and sit on international bodies.

David Heathcoat-Amory, a Conservative Eurosceptic, said: "The draft constitution published today would endow the EU with all the attributes of a state ... The British government must make clear its total opposition to this federal advance."

http://www.newsmax.com/showinsidecover.shtml?a=2002/10/30/202705

EU Constitution Proposed

NewsMax.com

BRUSSELS – The European Union took a giant step toward becoming a federal body Monday when the man given the task of simplifying the bloc's Byzantine decision-making procedures sketched out plans for an ambitious EU Constitution.
Former French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing, who heads the 105-member Convention on the Future of Europe, told delegates that a "Union of European States," should "administer certain common competences on a federal basis."

Giscard, who has compared his role to that of U.S. founding father Benjamin Franklin, also suggested that the EU should change its name to reflect the continent's new unity after 10 Central and Eastern European states join the alliance in 2004.

"United States of Europe" and "United Europe," were two of the names put forward by the 76-year-old politician.

One of Giscard's most controversial proposals is to grant dual citizenship to EU inhabitants.

At present, Europeans may carry standardized burgundy passports, but they are first and foremost citizens of nations like Britain or France. The draft constitution unveiled Monday allows Europeans to choose either national or EU citizenship and grants them certain rights - such as diplomatic protection abroad.

Another idea likely to spark heated debate is the proposal to give the EU its own "legal personality." This could lead to the EU having a seat in international forums such as the U.N. Security Council or the G-8 economic leadership group.

Presenting his draft constitution to convention members in Brussels, Giscard said: "We need a constitutional treaty to mark the beginning of a new Europe as we admit new members into our midst."

The 15-member bloc does not have a constitution. Instead it is governed by dozens of treaties and protocols, some of which date back almost half a century, that are widely considered to be unreadable and unintelligible.

Giscard's solution is to draw up a shorter and more simplified constitutional treaty laying out the EU’s goals and the rights of its citizens in clear language.

"The constitution should be somewhat lyrical so that students, schoolchildren and workers should be able to read it," he told the convention of parliamentarians and government ministers.

However, while the veteran French politician shied from proposing new powers for the EU, he did call for the creation of two institutions: a Congress of the Peoples of Europe, which would meet annually to map the EU's direction; and an EU president, who would represent the bloc on the international stage.

'Superstate in the Making'

Euroskeptics immediately attacked Giscard's plans. Hans Lindqvist, leader of the European Alliance of EU-critical Movements, said a "EU superstate is in the making, planned in a top-down manner by Mr. Giscard's convention."

However, Inigo Mendez de Vigo, the head of the European Parliament's delegation to the convention, hailed the text as an ambitious attempt to "refound Europe with a clear constitutional framework for the future."

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2002/10/28/162008.shtml

Unveiled: The Blueprint For United States Of Europe

By Stephen Castle in Brussels

The blueprint for a new constitution for Europe, unveiled yesterday, paves the way for sweeping changes to the EU but provoked instant British opposition by suggesting the bloc could be renamed "United States of Europe".

Published by Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, the former French president who is chairing an inquiry into the future of Europe, the document raises the prospect of a massive overhaul of the EU to accommodate up to 10 new countries due to join in 2004. It lists three possible titles besides the European Union. They are: European Community, the United States of Europe, and United Europe.

The outline document also suggests that all Europeans should be given the right to citizenship of the EU as well as their member states.

However, Peter Hain, the Welsh Secretary and the Government's representative on the convention, told BBC's Newsnight programme last night that the idea of a United States of Europe was "a non-runner", and that dual citizenship was "not something we would go along with".

British officials believe the name-change suggestion is tactical. Designed to please Euro-federalists, it has been touted "safe in the knowledge that it will be shot down".

These objections apart, the Government believes that Mr Giscard's text would open the way for many changes that would entrench the power of nation states.

The blueprint carefully leaves the most sensitive decisions for later. It has been billed as a "skeleton" constitution because it only sets out a framework, listing 46 articles and going into little detail. But changes that could be ushered in include the creation of a powerful new president of the EU who would report to national leaders, a congress of national and European parliamentarians, and an exit clause to allow countries to quit the EU.

The text outlines plans to give the EU the legal power to sign treaties and sit on international bodies but also says any competence "not conferred on the Union by the constitution rests with the member state". There is only one reference to powers being exercised on a "federal basis"and that is not seen as a threat by British officials.

Dual citizenship would confer rights including free movement, residence, voting powers and freedom to stand as a candidate in local elections and elections to the European Parliament.

Mr Giscard's convention of 105 national and European parliamentarians is drawing up a draft constitution that is to be recommended to EU heads of government next year. They alone can decide on a new treaty.

Part of the group's job is to simplify Europe's byzantine structures. One element of this is the fusion of the two treaties that set in place two entities: the European Community and the European Union. That process leaves open the possibility of a name change and Mr Giscard has made clear his preference for "United Europe".

Publication of the document marks the beginning of a battle over the all-important detail. The text prompted mixed reactions from the British political parties represented on the convention. Linda McAvan, a Labour Member of the European Parliament, said: "The Euro- realists are winning ... Giscard has struck a good balance."

But David Heathcoat-Amory, a Conservative Eurosceptic, said: "The draft constitution published today would endow the EU with all the attributes of a state ... The British Government must make clear its total opposition to this federal advance."

Andrew Duff, a Liberal Democrat member of the convention, said the document "clearly rejects the reactionary approach chosen by the UK Government" and "allows for a radical refoundation" of the union.

THE MAIN POINTS

• European Community/ European Union/United States of Europe/United Europe would be created.

• Its objectives would include economic and social cohesion, protection of common values, high employment, liberty, security and justice, foreign policy.

• The union would have "legal personality", with the power to sign treaties and take a seat on international bodies such as the United Nations.

• Union citizenship would be established and defined, giving rights of free movement, residence and voting in the union and diplomatic protection in other countries.

• An "exit clause" would allow countries to withdraw voluntarily from the union.

http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/story.jsp?story=346857

EU set for crucial expansion talks
BBC News

France and Germany are deeply divided over the issue

European Union leaders are gathering for a crucial summit in Brussels on how to pay for the accession of 10 new members in 2004.
The EU is divided over the financing of the enlargement and its effect on the Union's budget.

The dispute, which threatens to delay EU expansion if no agreement is reached at the summit, centres on farm subsidies and regional aid.

The German and French leaders are due to meet immediately before the summit in an effort to resolve their differences, which are the root of the problem.

Usually staunch allies in defending European Union ideals, France and Germany now differ deeply on how to fund the EU, specifically the agricultural sector, once 10 poor newcomers join.

France is opposing any agricultural reform before 2006 that could cut deeply into the pockets of its influential farmers.

Germany, which already pays the biggest share of the EU budget, does not want the additional costs of expanding the current system, especially given its difficult economic situation.

Stumbling block

On the eve of the summit, the Dutch parliament voted to support EU expansion after a 10-hour debate.

There had been concerns that the resignation of the country's centre-right coalition government last week might stall the process.

The dispute over funding centres primarily on farm subsidies and on the amount of regional aid new members would receive after they join.

EU countries who pay more into the budget than they get back - led by Germany and backed by Britain, the Netherlands and Sweden - say spending has to brought under control.

But those member states who receive the most subsidies, led by France, oppose reform of the farm support system.

Possible delay

Earlier this week, EU foreign ministers meeting in Luxembourg failed to reach agreement on how to finance enlargement.

The ministers did not even discuss agricultural subsidies, after all sides indicated that their positions had not changed.

BBC Europe correspondent Chris Morris says if there is no deal on money this week, that could delay negotiations with the candidate countries themselves on a full financial package.

That in turn, he says, would make it very hard to complete the enlargement talks by the end of this year.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/europe/2355617.stm

Giscard presents Constitution for a New Europe

Written by Honor Mahony, Edited by Lisbeth Kirk

VALÉRY GISCARD D'ESTAING - chairman of the European Convention is expected to present the draft for a European Constitutional treaty in the next Convention meeting, 28 October.

An important step in the progress towards a European Constitution took place on Thursday. Valery Giscard d’Estaing, the chairman of the Convention on the Future of Europe presented the outline of such a constitution to his colleagues in the Convention’s steering committee – or presidium. A short document consisting of just a few pages with some twenty chapter headings, it contained one very controversial point.

According to insiders, Mr Giscard wants to found a whole new EU system with this new constitution, which is supposed to replace all of the current EU treaties. However, there is a catch. Member states have just one chance to be part of this. Should they fail to ratify this new constitution – by referendum or otherwise – then they will simply not be a part of the new system. They will be outside of the new Europe.

Members of the presidium were not able to agree on the document. According to Mr Giscard’s spokesman, it was "discussed in depth" and "work on the draft will now continue." Whatever about the detail of the other clauses, this new proviso giving one chance to be part of the new Europe, raises interesting questions for countries such as Ireland and Denmark, both of whose constitutions would require a referendum?

After the Nice Treaty debacle in Ireland, where voters went to the polls twice on the same issue, it would put tremendous pressure on a referendum-weary public to be asked to vote on whether to be a part of a new EU or not. It would raise similar difficulties in the candidate countries, many of which in 2003 will have had a referendum to the join the current EU system.

Among the 20 chapters for a "Constitutional Treaty" is a chapter on European citizenship and a chapter integrating the Charter for fundamental rights. There are chapters about the common foreign policy and defence. A chapter on "legal personality" will make it possible for the EU to act as a state. Giscard's idea of a "European Congress" to appoint a president for Europe is also included.

http://www.euobserver.com/index.phtml?sid=9&aid=8033

Solana: Europe To Become A Super Power

Written by Lisbeth Kirk
Edited by Andrew Beatty

EU member states must realise the importance of their role in the World, said the EU's foreign policy chief, Javier Solana in an interview published by the German paper, Die Welt.

This week, on the 18 October, Mr Solana will have been three years in the difficult post as Secretary General of the Council of the European Union/High representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy. Over this period, the Spanish socialist, who is both a former Spanish foreign minister and a former Secretary-General of NATO, has co-ordinated the foreign affairs policies of the EU member states.

An enlarged EU with 25 member states would have double as many citizens as the US and four times as many as Japan. "We have no choice, we must play a role", Mr Solana said in the interview. He referred to the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, who said two years ago that Europe would become "A superpower, but not a superstate."

Mr Solana expressed his doubt about whether a new EU president would be able to succeed in coordinating the views of the different EU member states.

"I have my doubts, whether an artificial created post, of which the outline is not yet clear, would be able to contribute to any solution", Mr Solana said and characterized the debate as being still at an "embryonic stage".

He declared the six-monthly rotating EU presidencies as inefficient, especially when it comes to foreign affairs policy. However he failed to come up with any concrete alterative proposal. "I am not sure what will be the best solution", he said.

http://www.euobserver.com/index.phtml?sid=9&aid=7919
 

Prodi Predicts A United Europe

DAVID SCOTT

FULL economic integration in Europe will come a step nearer with the launch of the euro, Romano Prodi predicted yesterday.

The president of the European Commission said it was now inevitable there would be "common rules" for running national economies in the 12 countries where the euro replaced existing currencies from midnight.

Mr Prodi’s remarks are certain to revive controversy over claims that the introduction of the euro will eventually result in a "United States of Europe," with economic policies being decided in Brussels.

Eurosceptics believe that centralized taxation rules for Britain could be dictated by the European Union, with little control by the UK Treasury.

Mr Prodi, speaking in Brussels prior to EU celebrations marking the historic introduction of the euro, said the single currency could only mean yet more economic harmonization.

He said: "The euro in our pockets will lead to greater convergence in economic policy. We need to have more common rules."

It was not something that would happen overnight but was an inevitable process "which starts tomorrow".

There were various stages to go through as the eurozone countries sought to cement their new economic relationship.

He added: "I don’t want to go into all that now, but with the launch of the euro we have taken a major step down the path which will lead ineluctably to greater convergence of economic rules."

The commission president was asked what message he had for the three EU nations - Britain, Sweden and Denmark - which are not joining the single currency.

He replied: "It is best not to send any message, it is best not to interfere in national policies - in the past we have found that to be a mistake.

"It must be a democratic decision for the countries concerned but I do think the launch of the euro will have an enormous influence on the public in the countries which have not joined."

The controversy over the prospect of British taxes being raised and collected by Brussels was fuelled last week when the German finance minister, Hans Eichel, heralded the introduction of the euro as a major step towards a Europe-wide tax system.

He said he could imagine the development of a centralized European tax system to rival, and supersede, the tax regimes in individual countries.

Pedro Solbes, the commissioner responsible for the single currency, said yesterday that nearly £1 billion of euros was distributed in the 12 eurozone countries in advance of the midnight launch which was marked with a countdown and fireworks near the commission headquarters in Brussels.

About 150 million EU citizens - half the population of the 12 countries - had bought "mini-kits" of euros in readiness for the switchover.

On the eve of the launch, 40 per cent of the 15 billion euro notes and nearly three-quarters of the total production of 50 billion coins were in circulation.

Mr Solbes urged consumers not to hoard the new coins.

"These coins are not collectors’ items. This is a real currency and they are to be used. There is no point trying to hoard them."

He said that according to commission information, there had been very little attempt by retailers and businesses to use the euro launch as an excuse to raise prices.

In Germany, there had been a systematic rounding down of prices in the shops to reassure the public. "We appeal to people across Europe not to use the launch to justify any price increases. Of course, prices can go up in the normal way, but it should not be done just because we are changing currencies," Mr Solbes said.

The introduction of the single currency in the 12 countries that make up the so-called eurozone has inevitably rekindled the row over whether Britain should join.

Tony Blair, who has faced increasing pressure from both sides to spell out his plans, has been increasingly adopting a pro-single currency approach, saying at the weekend that it was "massively in our interest" that the single currency was a success.

Supporters of the euro want Mr Blair to personally lead a campaign to persuade Britons of the currency’s merits in advance of a referendum on UK entry.

The Tory leader, Iain Duncan Smith accused Mr Blair of "furtive maneuvering" to "bamboozle" Britain into scrapping the pound.

The Liberal Democrat leader, Charles Kennedy, called for legislation within the next year to clear the way for the euro to be adopted before 2005 - the earliest date when a general election was likely to be called.

However, there has been speculation that a referendum could be called in May 2003, the same date as the Scottish parliament elections.

The introduction of the euro has coincided with speculation about how long Wim Duisenberg will remain president of the European Central Bank.

Saying he would still be in the job "this time next year" Mr Duisenberg denied knowledge of any agreement with France for him to leave before July 2002.

Wendy Alexander yesterday urged Scottish businesses to seize the opportunities of a single European currency and warned that the euro was critical to the prospects of many Scottish businesses.

The enterprise minister said it was clearly important that Scotland remained an integral player in Europe.

IRELAND

NEW Year revelers in Dublin were in danger of being left strapped for cash last night as banks in Ireland closed ATM machines from 1:30am to stock them with euro notes.

It was hoped most ATM machines would be up and running, dispensing about 2 billion of euro notes, by about 5pm today.

Most pubs were avoiding any midnight confusion by leaving their tills filled with punts during the celebrations.

And it emerged that Ireland was among the most confident of the European nations about the new currency.

Ireland’s central bank said the emergence of so-called "mattress money" had led to a drop in demand for currency in the run-up to Christmas.

A spokesman said: "Normally at that time of year we expect demand for cash to rise by a couple of hundred million in December, but the position has gone into reverse for the first time."

Demand over the period had dropped from about 90 million punts per week to about five million, the spokesman said.

Yesterday a colourful launch party was held on Dublin’s Grafton Street, a popular shopping site where many of the new euro notes and coins will be spent in the January sales.

The finance minister, Charlie McCreevy, said: "The changeover to euro notes and coins involves all of us so it is important for everyone to play their part.

"We ask you to be patient over the coming days as shops and customers get used to the euro."

FRANCE

THE French finance minister, Laurent Fabius, yesterday renewed pressure on bank workers who have planned a strike following the euro’s debut this week, saying the new currency "must not be taken hostage".

Five unions representing bank employees have called the one-day strike for tomorrow , the first working day after euro bank notes and coins enter circulation on New Year’s Day. They are demanding talks on salaries, hiring and security.

The biggest concern remains that businesses will use the single currency as an excuse to raise prices.

The eurosceptic right-wing politician Philippe de Villiers said people should mourn the passing of such national heroes as the scientist Marie Curie or the philosopher Pascal on bank notes in favour of "anonymous computer-generated images of bridges and arches leading to nowhere".

GERMANY

GERMANS were subjected to petrol and cash famines last night as the countdown to the end of the mighty mark continued.

Half of the nation's cash dispensers were out of action - loaded with euros ready to dispense after the first stroke of midnight. Most filling stations will be closed between 9pm and 1am today as staff calibrate new prices in the currency few Germans now embrace.

At bus and railway stations staff were called in for overtime working to replace the euro-stocked machines that stood idle until after the witching hour struck.

Germans have had £100 million spent on them by the government trying to convince them the euro is a good thing. But in the last year just 7 per cent of them voluntarily changed their bank accounts over to the new currency from the one that gave them the postwar boomtime years.

Now it is a reality, polls show just over half embrace it while 85 per-cent feel it is merely an excuse for a consumer rip-off on a gargantuan scale.

German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder said in his New Year message that the dream of a united Europe free of conflict "becomes tangible with the common currency".

He encouraged skeptical Germans to embrace the euro.

"The mark meant a lot to us. We connect it with the memory of good times," he said. "But you can be sure: even better ones are ahead of us," forecasting that Germany's struggling economy will pick up in 2002.

BELGIUM/LUXEMBOURG

BELGIUM says it is ready for euros in a way its neighbors are not. In Brussels, the euro has been on the drawing board for years and restaurants and shops have long anticipated it.

Belgium has never had the emotional attachment to its national currency that has seen outbreaks of nostalgia in Austria and Germany. Claude Duvel, a Brussels financial analyst, said: "We are a postage-stamp country with power disproportionate to our size.

"Belgians are practical people. They would accept sardine heads as currency if sardines were worth as much as the old Belgian franc."

The tiny country of Luxembourg has also welcomed the euro , seeing a thankful end to decades of juggling with three currencies - French francs, German Deutschmarks and Luxembourg francs.

SPAIN

THE main headache for Spaniards is the vast pool of black-market money, hidden from the taxman under floorboards and mattresses, which will be forced out into the open.

Up to one third of the pesetas in circulation - some £13 billion worth - is estimated to be "black". All must be changed into euros before the end of February without attracting the attention of the authorities.

Sectors where cash is popular have been booming. The Bank of Spain has blamed record car sales and soaring house prices on the black peseta. Sales of fur coats, jewels, antiques and art have shot through the roof.

There has also been a sudden flight of black pesetas across the border into the Pyrenean mountain state - and banking paradise - of Andorra. Civil Guard police at the border post are capturing record amounts.

HOLLAND

THE Dutch have had the guilder for 776 years but are getting rid of their national currency quicker than other eurozone partners. In just four weeks, the coin of Old Master painters and 19th century merchants will be fit only for Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum.

Holland has been unsentimental about its loss, spurred on by thriving multinational companies like Phillips and Shell that have had enormous influence with both government and residents. Save the Guilder campaigns have not been an option.

The vast majority of Holland’s cash and vending machines were ready long before midnight last night to dispense euros. All public transport will stop taking guilders from today .

Within two weeks, the Finance Ministry predicts, 90 per cent of transactions will be in euros.

ITALY

ITALIANS greeted the arrival of the euro by rushing to their cash machines to withdraw record quantities of lire. With perhaps less faith than others in the workings of their banks, Italians pulled out 2.2 trillion lire, or 1.14 billion euros, in two days.

Italian Economy Minister Giulio Tremonti marked the euro’s introduction by warning against those who sought to invest it with superhuman powers.

"I’m slightly reticent to start walking down a path full of primates waving banners, faith healers, shamans, miracle makers and bankers," he told La Stampa newspaper.

The euro offered one bonus for Italians - cheaper sex. A survey of around a dozen prostitutes by Rome’s Il Messaggero newspaper found the majority planned to charge 150 euros for their services from New Year’s Day rather than the current 300,000 lire (155 euros).

AUSTRIA

CONCERN and confusion flared anew in Austria in the hours before the switch.

Some taxi drivers in Vorarlberg province urged their customers to stick with Austrian schillings until after the 6 January national holiday. Bus companies, meanwhile, urged the public to pay only with euros after midnight.

A growing handful of businesses in Austria have started to take prices down to the lower euro decimal - instead of the higher one - in an effort to reassure customers.

The price-cutters include the grocery giant Spar, the discount supermarket Hofer and Austrian Federal Railways.

PORTUGAL

CONFUSION broke out in Lisbon when traffic wardens put stickers on the city’s 2,000 parking meters saying the machines only accepted euros. However, the meters were programmed to switch only at midnight and in fact were still taking escudos.

Some drivers were baffled. "The confusion has started," said one as he walked away without feeding the meter. Portugal will have stocked half its 9,000 bank cash machines with euros by tonight.

Portugal’s government has enlisted the Catholic church. In rural areas of a country where the minimum wage is just 350 euros a month, priests end their sermons with displays of euros.

GREECE

THE Athens daily Kathimerini hailed the euro’s arrival in the home of Europe’s oldest currency, the drachma. "Greece is breaking the cycle that plagues uncertain, developing countries and joining the club of the strong economies, dealing in one of the three strongest currencies in the world," an editorial said.

In a country where people say calculators will be needed to buy a cup of coffee - 340.75 drachmas become one euro - the advent of Europe’s new currency has special meaning. The drachma dates back 2,650 years. Revived in the 1830s when Greece was liberated from the Ottoman Empire’s rule, it is a symbol of the country's independence.

FINNLAND

FINNS view the euro as much more than a currency: it is a symbol that their country has arrived at the seat of decision-making in Europe.

In a country of five million people who stood valiantly yet vainly against Soviet Russia at the outset of the Second World War, hopes loom large that the euro will cement a place at the heart of European policy, even though Finland sits on the fringes of the continent.

The 141-year-old makkra was dumped at midnight. Across the country teams of technicians were calibrating petrol pumps, vending machines and cash dispensers ready for the new money from Brussels.

http://www.thescotsman.co.uk/index.cfm?id=322002
 

2002 In The European Union

2002 will be a crossroads year for the European Union, which is expected to sign accession Treaties with up to 10 candidate countries by the end of the year, amid soul searching debates on far-reaching reforms of the EU system. The EU will mark another milestone event in 2002 with the launch of the Convention on the future of Europe, which will for the first time in the EU history introduce a new method of Treaty making, involving a broad range of actors including EU countries' parliaments and candidate countries' representatives.

Crucial test for the Euro

After the successful introduction of the euro notes and coins on 1 January, the EU will undertake in 2002 a crucial test: the stability of the single currency and its acceptance by global markets is still uncertain, amid global economic slowdown aggravated by the 11 September terrorist attacks. The lack of economic co-ordination among the countries members of the Eurozone and the insufficient economic convergence of the 12 economies, plus the unpredictability of the policy of the European Central Bank are elements that might fuel the mistrust of the markets in the first year of life of the new currency. The acceptance of the Euro by the European citizens is set to depend on the economic situation in the Eurozone: if the recovery does not resume in the second half of 2002, as the European Central Bank predicts, the citizens might associate the morose economic situation with the new currency.

Vital year for the European defence

The year 2002 will also be crucial for the European defence: after the Laeken Summit in December declared largely symbolically the European defence operational, the EU leaders have to provide the European rapid reaction force with teeth. 14 EU countries will have to convince Greece to drop its veto on a permanent agreement on relations between the EU and NATO, an accord that would give the EU force the right of using NATO military assets. With no possibility of using NATO’s logistics, the EU force will not be able to undertake any large scale operation in 2002.

Test-year for the Commission

2002 will also mark the halfway stage for the present Commission and will test the capacity of a highly-criticised president of the Commission, Romano Prodi, to avoid that the critics against him would affect the capacity of the European Commission to assume leadership in the EU affairs. Also, 2002 is a test for the capacity of the Commission to reform the way it does business politically, financially and administratively.

Elections for the Presidency of the European Parliament

At the beginning of 2002, the members of the European Parliament will elect a new president for the House, to replace the present French Conservative Nicole Fontaine, who took office in 1999. This election might well bring for the first time in the history of the European Parliament a representative of a smaller political group at the head of the Parliament, if the leader of the Liberals, Pat Cox, supported by the Liberals and the Conservatives, gets elected.

http://euobserver.com/index.phtml?selected_topic=9&action=view&article_id=4704
  

UK Wants EU 'Super Council'

By Brian Groom and Andrew Parker

Britain is considering putting forward proposals to entrench the authority of the European Union's three biggest powers in a body similar to the United Nations Security Council.

Its potentially explosive plan to recognize formally the predominance of Germany, France and the UK when the union expands from 15 to 25 members will upset smaller member states, and Spain and Italy.

UK officials insist, however, that decision-making of the government heads of the European Council is already close to unworkable, and could be paralyzed when up to 10 extra nations from southern and eastern Europe join in 2004.

Britain's radical options for making decision-making easier involve having a permanent secretary general to chair council meetings, rather than the national leader who holds the EU's six-monthly rotating presidency. More radical still would be a Security Council-type inner body that could take executive decisions outside meetings of the full 25-member council.

Britain's idea of a Security Council-type inner body could apply not just to the main European Council, but also to the councils of ministers covering areas such as justice and home affairs, social affairs, agriculture, and economics and finance.

The proposals are at an early stage and the UK has yet to decide whether to put them forward as part of the debate about the EU's future in the run-up to an intergovernmental conference on its treaties and working methods in two years' time.

Even if it followed the Security Council model and included other nations on a rotating basis alongside Britain, France and Germany, the idea is likely to be resisted by those left out.

The sensitivity of the issue was underlined in November when a row broke out after Tony Blair, Britain's prime minister, invited French and German leaders to a private dinner in Downing Street to discuss Afghanistan. After protests from other countries, the guest list was expanded to include Italy, Spain, Belgium and the Netherlands, plus Javier Solana, EU foreign policy chief.

Britain believes any streamlined system must acknowledge the reality that the big three will need to work together.

Even to consider the move illustrates Britain's desire to be at the heart of EU policy making alongside France and Germany, the community's traditional "motor".

The Laeken summit last month agreed to set up a Convention on the Future of Europe, chaired by ex-French president Valery Giscard d'Estaing, and issued a wide-ranging declaration to guide its work. It put on the agenda some issues that have caused difficulty for Britain - such as an EU constitution, direct elections for the European Commission president, and a possible extension of qualified majority voting into sensitive areas.

But it included many elements Britain sought - rejection of a European superstate, an emphasis on issues that affect daily life, a review of the division between the EU and member states that could result in tasks being restored to countries, and a stronger role for national parliaments.

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German Floats EU Army Scheme

By Martin Walker
UPI Chief International Correspondent

WASHINGTON, Jan. 24 (UPI) -- A top German diplomat called Thursday for the European Union to develop its own army as a logical further step toward integration after the successful launch of the new single currency, the euro.

"Does it make sense to keep the national armies?" German Ambassador to Washington Wolfgang Ischinger asked a selected audience of diplomats and foreign policy scholars at the Woodrow Wilson International center for Scholars in Washington. "Does it make sense to keep 15 navies, some of them rather small, but with lots of admirals?

"I have no problem with a European military structure," Ischinger said, going further than other high German officials addressing this political issue that has infuriated Euroskeptics who oppose a federal European state.

Noting approvingly that his government had already proposed developing a common military transport system to be used by all EU member states, the ambassador said, "I don't think there's a limit to this process."

Ischinger was state secretary of the German Foreign Ministry, the highest ranking career diplomat, before being assigned to Washington. In his unscripted remarks, he said it seemed illogical to maintain separate officer training academies in all 15 member states of the EU, and the more so as EU enlargement plans soon could increase the membership to 25 or more countries.

The concept of a fully European army, in which national uniforms and command structures would give way to a communal system, has hitherto been espoused mainly by officials of the European Commission, the EU's executive arm, who see themselves as the custodians of the European ideal.

EU Commission President Romano Prodi says the creation of a single army in which British or French or German soldiers fight under an EU flag and take orders from a European commander is the "logical next step" after the euro. Prodi said the EU must build its own army or risk being "marginalized in the new world history."

By contrast, former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has warned that moves toward a European army or the development of the new European Rapid Reaction Force, separate from NATO, is highly dangerous for the Atlantic Alliance.

"The real drive toward a separate European defense is the same as that towards a single European currency -- namely the Utopian venture of creating a single European super-state to rival the U.S. on the world stage," she warned the English-Speaking Union last year.

The issue is highly charged, because of the current EU attempt to build its own Rapid Reaction Force of 60,000 troops, with its own air and naval support and command and staff structure, that could operate independently of NATO when the alliance as a whole does not wish to get involved.

The nearest to a European Army is the experimental Eurocorps force founded by France and Germany. This joint Franco-German brigade, in which Spain, Belgium and Luxemburg also are participating, is directly responsible to the EU and NATO. The Eurocorps, with its headquarters in Strasbourg, has deployed to Bosnia and Kosovo and is likely to feature in the new EU force, but the national governments still have last word over deployments and operations.

The original Eurocorps ambition of bilingual French and German troops mixing down to platoon and squad level has been scaled back because of language difficulties and because the troops preferred to share barracks with fellow nationals. But the officers are bilingual and command one another's troops in training.

The idea of a European army can be traced back to Napoleon, who once said that with French officers and British troops he would be able to conquer the world.

Copyright © 2002 United Press International

http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=24012002-032647-6528r
 

EU To Tackle World's Hotspots

By European Political Editor Robin Oakley

LONDON, England (CNN) -- European Union foreign ministers meeting in Brussels on Monday have a fair number of hot political potatoes on their plate. They also have a surprise new face in their line-up.

The other 14 foreign ministers will be joined by Italy's Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. Following the resignation of his former foreign minister Renato Ruggiero, Berlusconi has decided that he will do the job as well as his own for a while. The millionaire prime minister is not, apparently, putting in for two salaries.

The floundering Middle East peace process is one problem the 15 will tackle early. An EU mission to the area in 2001 achieved little. Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon urged the EU to stop giving money to the Palestinian Authority, saying it would only be spent on arms.

Some EU diplomats are considering whether they should now demand recompense from Israel for the 18 million dollars worth of EU-funded projects in the Palestinian Authority they estimate to have been destroyed by Israeli troops in retaliation raids for terrorist attacks on Israeli citizens.

But the EU has also been warning Yasser Arafat, now under fire from U.S. President George W. Bush as well, that the funds which the EU provides could be cut unless he does more to curb terrorism. The key decision this week for the EU is whether to impose sanctions on Robert Mugabe and his government in Zimbabwe. European leaders are demanding an end to political violence and intimidation in Zimbabwe.

Following a recent visit to Brussels by Foreign Minister Stanislaus Mudenge and other members of the Zimbabwe government the EU demanded further assurances that international observers will be free to observe and international journalists free to report on the presidential elections in Zimbabwe due to be held on March 9.

The EU wanted the invitation and accreditation of international observers at least six months before the election. But few European diplomats are expecting to get the assurances they have sought and they know the time is approaching when they will have to back up their threats to impose sanctions. Diplomats have been seeking further clarification from Zimbabwe over the weekend.

Monday's meeting is the first General Affairs Council, as the foreign ministers' get-togethers are called, under the presidency of Spain, whose Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar has promised to make the fight against terrorism a priority.

Spain also hopes to use its six months in the chair to press on with the program to enlarge the EU from 15 to 25 countries, with a work program designed to ensure that negotiations are complete for most by the end of 2002.

Other subjects expected to be discussed at the foreign ministers meeting include EU aid to Afghanistan, relations with Russia over its Baltic port of Kaliningrad, which is cut off from the rest of Russia by Poland and Lithuania, and the Western Balkans.

The ministers are expected to discuss the setting up of an EU force to take over the work of the U.N. International Police Task Force in Bosnia-Herzegovina when the U.N. mission concludes its work at the end of 2002.

http://europe.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/europe/01/27/brussels.oakley/index.html
 

European Leaders Warn US Over Threatening Iraq

European skepticism about eventual American strikes on Iraq rose over the weekend as German foreign minister Joschka Fischer expressed new criticism about President George W. Bush's labelling of Iraq, Iran and North Korea as an "axis of evil".

In an interview with the newsmagazine Der Spiegel released over the weekend, Mr Fischer objected to Mr Bush's threats directed at Iraq. "Up to now, no one has presented me with evidence that the terror of Osama bin Laden has anything to do with the regime of Saddam Hussein," he said.

Other high-ranking European leaders have expressed similar criticism of the Americans. Hubert Védrine, the French foreign minister, last week called Mr Bush’s views "simplistic". He complained that the Americans reduced "all problems in the world to the struggle against terrorism". The complaints have been echoed by other politicians known as enthusiasts for America, such as Chris Patten, the European Union’s commissioner for external affairs.

Spanish prime minister and leader of the EU presidency, Mr Jose Maria Aznar also commented over the weekend on the American foreign policy. "We shall have to discuss the new vision of American foreign policy. We are experiencing a historic moment, in which Europeans and North Americans must redefine their alliance," he said in an interview in the German newspaper, Der Spiegel.

The European Parliament Committee on foreign affairs together with the Industry and external trade committee on Tuesday host a public hearing "A Global Dimension for a Renewed Transatlantic Partnership". Among the speakers are Nato general secretary, Lord Robertson and Spanish foreign minister, Josep Piqué.

Written by Lisbeth Kirk
Edited by Blake Evans-Pritchard

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EU Takes Initiative On Saudi Peace Plan

Brian Whitaker and agencies
The Guardian

Europe's foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, met Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia yesterday to explore a Middle East peace initiative that has caused a flurry of excitement around the world.

Mr Solana left the two-hour meeting in Jeddah without speaking to reporters, but a Saudi official who asked not to be named said he had expressed support for the prince's plan.

"We expect the European Union to play a bigger role in the Middle East peace process in light of today's talks," the official said.

Mr Solana's spokeswoman, Cristina Gallach, said the prince would be working closely with the Arab League to present his initiative at an Arab summit in Beirut on March 27. The prince was "determined to advance his peace initiative and to make it the common Arab position," Ms Gallach told Associated Press.

Crown Prince Abdullah - who is in charge of day-to-day affairs in Saudi Arabia - said earlier this month that his plan is for "full [Israeli] withdrawal from all the occupied territories, in accord with UN resolutions", in exchange for the "full normalisation" of relations between Israel and the Arab countries.

Few details have emerged, but President George Bush has praised the move and several Israeli leaders have expressed cautious interest. Yesterday, the official Saudi news agency reported messages of support from Russia and China.

Mr Solana's arrival marked the first visit by a western leader to discuss the prince's proposal. The US has described the proposal as a "note of hope", but stopped short of heralding the breakthrough portrayed by the press in Saudi Arabia and parts of the Arab world.

The Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, has yet to comment officially, but an aide described his view as positive.

The Israeli president, Moshe Katsav, opposes the full withdrawal to 1967 lines proposed by Prince Abdullah, but has said: "Negotiations begin from opening positions, and then you make compromises".

Kuwait said the initiative was "a responsible position by an Arab official who carries Arab, Islamic and international weight".

In Cairo, Amr Moussa, the secretary-general of the Arab League, said Arab countries would have no "problem in dealing with Israel" if Palestinian needs are met.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,659115,00.html  

Convention Aims To Turn Europe Into Global Power

By Martin Fletcher, European Correspondent

WITH bold visions but solemn warnings of the price of failure, Europe’s leaders yesterday launched a unique constitutional convention to chart the future of the continent.

If the convention succeeds in kindling a new sense of unity and purpose it will "light up the future of Europe" and transform the continent into a global political power, proclaimed Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, its president. If it fails, Europe’s nations will be "left facing each other, grimly analysing the causes of our decline and fall".

The EU’s heads of government have charged the 105-member convention with finding ways to reconnect the EU with its disenchanted citizens, reform its sclerotic decision-making machinery before enlargement, and achieve a binding separation of powers between Brussels and national capitals. It would pave the way to a "Constitution for Europe", M Giscard said.

With contributions invited from the humblest citizen to the largest civic bodies, the year-long exercise amounts to the most extensive public consultation in the EU’s 54-year-old history, and for the first time includes the post-Soviet states of Central and Eastern Europe seeking membership.

"There are times when peoples are called on to affirm and define their reasons for being together. For the peoples of Europe such a moment has arrived," Romano Prodi, the European Commission President, told the opening ceremony in the European Parliament’s packed chamber. "A whole continent is considering its future".

"Today marks a decisive and revolutionary step forward for European democracy," Pat Cox, the Parliament’s president, declared. "This convention strikes a blow for openness and transparency, for innovation and creativity."

In a speech that began with "Ladies and Gentlemen" in 11 languages, M Giscard, 76, the former French President, said the convention’s core task was finding a way to combine "a strong feeling of belonging to the EU with a continuing sense of national identity".

He issued a sober warning about the EU’s parlous present state, pointing to the increasing assertion of national interests, declining public support, and an ill-functioning, scarcely comprehensible decision-making process. After 50 years the European project was in danger of "running out of steam".

He urged the convention’s members to strive for a strong consensus that the heads of government would find hard to ignore when the convention reports next year. The ultimate prize was "a continent at peace, freed of its barriers and obstacles, where history and geography are finally reconciled, allowing the states of Europe to build their future together after following their separate ways to East and West."

The convention is made up of 15 representatives of the EU’s heads of government, 30 members of the 15 national parliaments, 16 members of the European Parliament, 39 representatives from 13 countries seeking EU membership, and two European commissioners.

Its members include 15 incumbent government ministers, at least eight former Presidents or Prime Ministers, and 18 other former ministers.

British officials particularly welcomed Signor Prodi’s speech. He called for a European constitution that "marks the birth of Europe as a political entity", but also declared that the EU’s goal was "not to build a superstate" and that Brussels had to be willing to return powers to member states.

The British Government had originally opposed a convention, fearing it would produce a federalist fait accompli, but a Foreign Office official said yesterday’s speakers had "come across as positive, pragmatic, focused people with a strong sense of purpose. The Commission looks ready to roll up its sleeves and get down to the job in hand."

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EU Asked To Intervene On Middle East Issue

Journalists representing 15 Mediterranean countries called on the EU to intervene on the alarming conflict between Israel and Palestine. During a conference in Cyprus last weekend, these journalists said that the EU should "intervene with firmness in the war between Israel and the Palestinians with a political and diplomatic task force to help resume the dialogue which will eventually lead to the recognition of a Palestinian state and to security for the state of Israel."

The journalists also hope that a speedy solution in Cyprus could be found. A declaration, adopted by 37 media syndicates, said: ''in order to contribute, we will engage in organizing and supporting initiatives and discussions among Greek and Turkish Cypriot journalists and Israeli and Palestinian journalists.''

The meeting decided to set up a seven-member committee, which will meet every four months to prepare the next conference, in Tunisia. The countries represented in the two-day Conference were Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Greece, Turkey, Cyprus, Malta, Palestine, Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco.

Written by Sharon Spiteri
Edited by Blake Evans-Pritchard

http://www.euobserver.com/index.phtml?selected_topic=9&action=view&article_id=5513
 

World Crises Loom Over EU Summit

Trade unionists demonstrate for more workers rights

European leaders are gathering in Barcelona for a summit on economic reform that threatens to be overshadowed by foreign affairs, and street protests.

The biggest security operation the city has ever seen is under way, with Nato Awacs warning aircraft on patrol and jet fighters on alert.

At the last minute, the presidents of Yugoslavia and Montenegro have been invited to attend the first day of the summit on Friday, following their agreement on the restructuring of Yugoslavia on Thursday.

A draft declaration on the Middle East has also been prepared, voicing support for Wednesday's UN Security Council resolution, which refers for the first time to the existence of a "Palestinian state".

The host country Spain, together with the UK and Italy, is keen to see the summit take big steps along the path of economic liberalization agreed at the so-called dot.com summit in Lisbon two years ago.

The goal is the creation of a truly common market, with increased cross-border competition in energy, transport, financial and postal markets.

France and Belgium are among the less enthusiastic countries, which fear that the drive to cut business costs could erode Europe's traditional social safeguards.

France has blocked full liberalization of energy markets, and an agreement is now expected that would open markets for business users only.

Thousands of trade unionists marched through Barcelona on Thursday to voice their concern at the prospect of US-style economic liberalism spreading to Europe.

International concerns

EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana played a major role in brokering the Yugoslavia restructuring agreement, and the European leaders will be keen to celebrate his success.

Mr Solana will also be delivering a report on the Middle East - a region where the EU would like to play a bigger peacekeeping role.

Europe's response to the prospect of US military action against Iraq, and its assessment of the elections in Zimbabwe, are also likely to come up in Barcelona.

Spanish authorities have been sealing off the summit site from the rest of the city, using cement and steel wire barricades.

Spanish news reports say that police uncovered an plot by the Basque separatist group ETA to attack the meeting.

There have also been reports that hardline German and East European anarchists are heading for the city, leading to fears of violence at the biggest planned demonstration on Saturday afternoon.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/newsid_1873000/1873507.stm

EU Seeks Mid-East Resolution

European Union foreign ministers are holding an emergency session in Luxembourg to discuss what they can do to help end the escalating violence between Israelis and Palestinians.

The move comes as pressure grows on the US administration to take a more active role, together with criticism that it is sending contradictory messages.

France is suggesting that a top-level EU delegation be sent to the Middle East.

The emergency meeting is likely to see the diplomatic pressure on Israel stepped up, together with criticism, by some, of the attitude of the United States.

The Spanish presidency of the EU has urged Israel to end the isolation of Yasser Arafat in Ramallah and to comply with last Saturday's United Nations Security Council resolution.

That called for an immediate ceasefire and the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Palestinian cities.

EU delegation

But the BBC's Oana Lungescu says that beyond this, there is little agreement on what to do next.

France had advocated a tougher line towards Israel than many others in the EU, and has called for an international UN force.

French President Jacques Chirac is proposing that the Spanish Prime Minister, Jose Maria Aznar, heads a delegation to meet both Mr Arafat and the Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon.

The head of the EU's executive, Romano Prodi, said there should be a new mediation - bringing the United States, the EU, the United Nations, Russia and moderate Arab states together round the same table.

Our correspondent says the EU, as the main financial backer of the Palestinian Authority and one of Israel's main trading partners, is unwilling to turn its economic clout into political influence.

Counter claims

Asked about possible trade sanctions, Mr Prodi said the trade agreement with Israel was an instrument of dialogue, not of blackmail.

The EU meeting comes as the Israeli and Palestinian delegates at the United Nations have opened the latest Security Council debate on the Middle East, accusing each other of failing to take the necessary steps to end the conflict.

The Israel ambassador at the UN, Yehuda Lancry, challenged the Palestinians to implement an immediate ceasefire to end suicide bomb attacks.

The Palestinian observer to the UN, Nasser al-Kidwa, reiterated that the Palestinian people were the victims of an occupation and he urged members to adopt a resolution aimed at increasing pressure on Israel to withdraw from Palestinian towns.

Anti-Arab sentiment

The BBC's diplomatic correspondent Barnaby Mason says that it is Mr Sharon's contention that Israeli military action is part of the global war against terrorism.

Our correspondent says that a large section of American opinion agrees with him. In many people's minds the Middle East crisis has merged into the war on terror.

That perception is reinforced by the fact that Arabs carried out the 11 September attacks, so that Palestinian suicide bombings against the Israelis are equated with the suicide hijackings directed at New York and Washington.

The state of American public opinion partly explains President Bush's qualified support for Israeli military action and his reluctance to put greater pressure on Mr Sharon.

But the message out of Washington is confused, since the administration also voted for the UN Security Council resolution.

And pressure is building inside the United States for a more active American role.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/middle_east/newsid_1908000/1908989.stm
 

Arabs Seek New U.N. Demand For Pullout

By Edith M. Lederer, Associated Press

United Nations- Arab nations lobbied for a new Security Council resolution Tuesday condemning Israel's defiance of the council's demand to withdraw its troops immediately from Palestinian cities, but the United States said it would veto the resolution if necessary.

The Bush administration wants action on the ground not more resolutions, U.S. deputy ambassador James Cunninghan said.

But the Palestinian U.N. observer, Nasser Al-Kidwa, said that with the situation in the West Bank is deteriorating and Israeli attacks continuing, Arab nations want "as expeditious action as possible" from the council.

In hopes of sending a unanimous message to Israel, he said the Arab group was willing to delay a vote until Wednesday.

Al-Kidwa said some members wanted to wait until after a high-level meeting in Madrid on Wednesday by the so-called "Quartet" of key Mideast players - U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, European Union policy chief Javier Solana and Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov.

The United States and Britain oppose another resolution just as Powell is heading to the Middle East to try to get both sides to implement a cease-fire and start down the road to peace.

After council members discussed the timing of the Arab draft late Tuesday, Cunningham said "we would veto this resolution if it's brought to a vote."

The council has approved three resolutions in just over three weeks, the latest on Thursday, outlining a blueprint for an end to 18 months of Israeli-Palestinian violence, a return to negotiations and a peace deal culminating in the establishment of a Palestinian state. It has demanded an immediate cease-fire and an Israeli troop withdrawal "without delay."

"The Security Council ... in three good, coherent resolutions ... set the groundwork for the effort that's now underway in the region," Cunningham said. "We think it's a good idea for the Security Council to get out of the business of producing documents and to wait and see what happens where we want things to happen."

Council members stressed the importance of preserving the council's newfound unanimity, and Cunningham said the United States hopes the Arabs won't force a vote.

The council scheduled another discussion on the new resolution late Wednesday morning.

Al-Kidwa argued that the new resolution is not dealing with Powell's mission but Israel's withdrawal, which could help Powell's peace efforts.

"It is not that we are trying to pick a fight or that we are only impatient, but it is the situation on the ground that poses a certain urgency," he said.

The new resolution introduced Monday by Syria on behalf of Arab and nonaligned nations again demands immediate implementation of the previous resolutions.

It expresses grave concern at the humanitarian crisis facing Palestinian civilians, and demands freedom of movement for medical and humanitarian organizations.

The draft also calls for "an international presence that could help provide better conditions on the ground."

At an open council meeting on Monday and Tuesday, many countries called for some kind of international presence to help end the escalating conflict - including Russia, Britain and France, all permanent veto-wielding council members.

Israel's U.N. Ambassador Yehuda Lancry said Tuesday he reiterated to the council Israel's past offer to allow U.S. monitors oversee implementation of steps to return to negotiations.

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Haider Wants To Unite Europe's Far-Right, But Without Le Pen

Austrian far-right leader Joerg Haider called for a pan-EU far-right party to fight European parliament elections in 2004, but snubbed France's Jean-Marie Le Pen as too racist.

A joint far-right electoral platform is "conceivable" and even "necessary" said Haider in an interview with the Austrian weekly Profil, calling for a "counter-program to the bureaucratic stupidities of Brussels."

"All it would take would be a few well-known names standing as candidates in their countries under the name New Europe, he said, adding that there was "enormous potential in Denmark, Holland and Italy."

But he distanced himself from Le Pen, the National Front leader who has caused a political earthquake in France by winning through to May 5 run-off presidential elections against incumbent head of state Jacques Chirac.

"Le Pen has racist positions in his program," said Haider, who nevertheless said last week that Le Pen's first-round success was a "victory for democracy" in France.

Haider's aides appear more pragmatic than the far-right leader himself.

"Political wisdom requires us to make contact rapidly with the National Front," said Andreas Moelzer, one of Haider's closest aides, in the latest issue of the weekly News magazine.

"It would be absurd to launch a European-wide list without that party," he added.

Le Pen used an interview with the same magazine to call for a meeting with Haider, whom he praised as an "anti-Socialist wizard," saying he had always liked the Austrian's "ambitious" politics.

The French far-right leader, catapulted into Haider's seat as Europe's most notorious far-righter by the April 21 success, has also expressed interest in a Europe-wide far-right alliance, tentatively called "Euronats."

Both Haider's and Le Pen's offers have drawn a mixed reception from Europe's far-right parties.

In Italy, Umberto Bossi's Northern League and Gianfranco Fini's Northern Alliance, both in Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's government, have ruled out any collaboration with the Austrian or French far-righters.

"There is not the slightest possibility of collaborating either with Le Pen's party or with Haider's" said a National Alliance spokesman in Rome. "We have absolutely nothing in common with them," said a Northern League official.

In Denmark the Danish People's Party which informally supports the right wing government, said it had had no contacts with Haider and "even less" with Le Pen.

"We have deliberately refused all contact with far-right parties" said its deputy leader Peter Skaarup in Copenhagen.

Skaarup told AFP his party had no interest in supporting Haider's proposal.

"We defend Danish interests and we have no plans to create a pan-European party even though we have denounced the Brussels bureaucracy."

In the Netherlands the party of colorful populist Pim Fortuyn said it "does not want to associate with people like Le Pen or Haider."

On the other hand Belgium's Vlaams Blok "would have no objection to an alliance with the Freedom Party," said Marc Spruyt of the Flemish daily De Morgen. "Contacts already exist," said the journalist.

Experts say Haider's reluctance over contact with Le Pen was more tactical than fundamental.

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Battlefield Set Between Two Visions Of Europe

The Commission’s proposal on future EU reforms, unveiled on Wednesday, set the ground for the debate on the future of Europe, providing a rival vision to the project supported by leading heads of EU states.

With the Commission’s proposal on the table, the “battleground” for the EU future is finally set, and the options of deepening the European integration through the so-called community method or favoring inter-governmental cooperation through more powers to EU states are on the table.

The Commission countered through its paper a forceful proposal put forward by the leaders of France, the UK and Spain and pushed robust proposals for reinforcing the Commission’s role in the EU. Members of the European Parliament did not hesitate to preach a holly alliance with the Commission in the reforms battle to achieve more powers for the Commission, instead of the Council, as this would indirectly strengthen the Parliament, which controls the Commission, but has no powers over the Council.

Two visions of Europe
French President Jacques Chirac, British prime minister Tony Blair and recently Spanish prime minister, José Maria Aznar, support an EU president elected by the EU governments and keeping foreign affairs in the hands of the Council.

The Commission wants the EU to achieve almost complete powers on the foreign and security policy and on the coordination of economic policy. Also, the Commission wants the function of high representative for foreign policy, currently in the Council’s hands, to be moved to the Commission, which should then have the right to initiate and conduct the foreign policy, and represent the Union externally. The battle for the future of Europe is to take place between these two visions, and the cards are now on the table.

The new alliance
Members of the European Parliament have, with almost no exception, supported the Commission’s proposal, as reinforcing the Commission indirectly means strengthening the role of the European Parliament, which controls the Commission. More powers to the Council, which the parliament cannot control, would be a setback for both the Parliament and the Commission. The launch of the Commission’s proposal triggered the birth of a holy alliance between the two institutions, which would both gain from enhancing the community method.

Commission provokes to spark debate
The European Commission chose to issue a provocative proposal instead of an conservative one in order to spark the debate, Commission president Romano Prodi suggested when he presented the proposal to the European Parliament on Wednesday. “We take the risk of provoking. It is less serious than that of being marginalized. After all, I am almost sure the Convention is going to propose something which will not be very different from what we propose,” Commissioner in charge with reforms and member of the Convention’s presidium, Michel Barnier, told a French newspaper.

Battle between a federal and an intergovernmental model
Members of the European Parliaments accused the leaders of France, Britain and Spain of seeking to prevent the emergence of a “real Europe”, more federal and less submitted to the EU countries governments. “The model proposed by Mr Aznar is the Holy German Roman Empire, it is not a community model,” accused the leader of the European Socialists in the European Parliament, Enrique Baron Crespo. “We are your allies in this battle,” Green leader Monica Frassoni told Mr Prodi. The battle between the two visions of Europe hides a battle between a federal and an intergovernmental model, and a more pragmatic fight for who holds the power: Brussels or the national capitals.

Dictatorship of the Council
“This is the dictatorship of the Council,” German conservative member of the European Parliament and member of the Convention Elmar Brok said, speaking about the proposal to elect a Mr Europe by the EU governments. “The reason they put forward this proposal is that long term prime ministers are looking for their next job,” Mr Brok added. For French MEP Jean-Louis Bourlanges, the proposal supported by Mr Aznar, Blair, and Chirac follows the principle used by Napoleon “divide and rule,” while the Commission defends a good cause, of unifying the powers. The MEPs also warned there won’t be a mandate for the Parliament to control this new Mr Europe, if elected by the governments, and he could become very powerful. He also deplored the creation of this post outside the Commission which would lead to a fight between the two bureaucracies.

Convention leadership discreet
The chairmen of the Convention welcomed the Commission’s landmark proposal but failed to take position for one of the two visions on the table. President Giscard d’Estaing has avoided making it clear so far whether he was for more powers for the Council or the Commission. Before the Convention started to work, Mr Giscard told the Committee on constitutional affairs of the European Parliament that, in the beginning, he was a fan of the Council, then of the Commission, but now he hasn’t defined his new orientation yet. Vice-president of the Convention, Giuliano Amato, also avoided taking a position: “Times are not ripe for me to say my opinion on this, I want the Convention to come up with an answer.” Mr Amato also suggested that a proposal on a third way, in between the two visions, merging elements from the two, was possible.

However, the debate on the future of Europe has entered the crucial substantial phase, as the cards are now on the table.

Written by Daniela Spinant
Edited by Lisbeth Kirk

http://www.euobserver.com/front_print.phtml?article_id=6384
  

Kharazi Urges EU To Step Up Mideast Involvement

TEHRAN (AFP) - Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi called on the European Union to play a "more active role" in the Middle East, during a meeting with Luxembourg's foreign minister, state radio reported.

"We want the European Union to play a more active role in a settlement of the Middle East conflict," Kharazi said during his talks with Lydie Polfer, who started a four-day visit to Tehran Monday.

"The massacre of the Palestinian people is the result of the United States' support for the Zionist regime," he was quoted by the radio as saying.

The two ministers discussed the Afghan crisis, the radio said, adding that Polfer, also Luxembourg's external commerce minister, expressed her hope that their two countries would strengthen relations.

Polfer, the first Luxembourger official to visit Iran since the 1979 Islamic revolution, later met with President Mohammad Khatami, who said US President George W. Bush was the "sponsor of evil."

"Is it right that certain politicians use their material and military powers to insult peoples and to characterize them as 'evil', when they themselves are the sponsors of the worst of evil," Khatami was quoted by the state news agency IRNA as asking with regard to Bush.

That "worst," he said is "aggression and violence."

On the economic front, meanwhile, Khatami expressed hopes that Iran and Luxembourg might "have good cooperation in the petroleum and gas sectors."

Speaking after the signing of a bilateral accord on investment, the president said Iran was "open to the participation of others in its development program."

Polfer was also due to hold talks with Trade Minister Mohammad Shariatmadari and Vice President for Environmental Protection Masumeh Ebtekar.

Her visit comes two weeks after the EU put back by one month a decision on starting talks with Tehran on a trade and cooperation pact, when differences emerged over whether the agreement should include sections also establishing a political relationship with Iran.

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Convention To Reconcile The Two Visions Of Europe

A leading member of the Presidium of the Convention on the EU future toned down on Thursday the conflict between the two visions of Europe put forward by the European Commission and the heads of a number of large EU states. Admitting that the game was now open between a more integrated European Union, with more powers for the Commission, and an inter-governmental Europe, Spanish MEP Inigo Mendez de Vigo stresses it is "up to the Convention's cleverness to find a way in the middle." He believes the Commission did well to stir the debate with an ambitious proposal, claiming, for instance, the monopoly on foreign affairs. "Prodi played his cards, and the EU heads of state theirs," Mr de Vigo said, it is now up to us to find a compromise. He also pointed out that, in any case, the debate is about more Europe, in both visions on the table.

Leaders of Spain, the UK and France made proposals for electing an EU president at the head of the Council who would lead foreign policy, and the Commission launched a rival proposal asking powers for the Commission over EU foreign policy and internal security.

Heads of state debate does not harm Convention
Mr de Vigo believes the parallel debate carried on by the EU heads of state on EU reforms does not harm the work of the Convention. "I do not believe the parallel debate of some EU heads of state would empty the Convention from its meaning," he said on the eve of the June session of the Convention, on Thursday. Mr De Vigo points out that the flurry of proposals for reforming the EU's institutions are the result of the Convention. "The striptease has started," Mr de Vigo said, commenting that now politicians were rushing to expose their views on future reforms.

For the Spanish MEP, the fact that this open debate has been ignited already marks a success on the part of the Convention. The EU states have been dragging their feet on reforming the highly criticized Council of Ministers, but since the Convention has started working, they are rushing to reform, and will discuss reform proposals at the Seville summit later this month, he pointed out.

Giscard is an asset for the Convention
Mr de Vigo believes the Convention will have to mediate among the clashing visions on Europe put on the table and come up with a good result, acceptable to all EU states. He stresses one of the main assets of the Convention is its leadership: chairman Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, vice-chairmen Giuliano Amato and Jean-Luc Dehaene will fight to impose the Convention's result, and they are likely to be taken seriously by the EU heads of states.

Giscard accused of negotiating with EU leaders with no mandate
Green MEP and member of the Convention, Johannes Voggenhuber, accused the Convention's president of secretly negotiating with heads of state of large EU countries, with no mandate from the Convention. "I read in newspapers about his meetings with heads of states," Mr Voggenhuber said, accusing Mr Giscard of carrying his own parallel negotiations by EU leaders and bypassing the Convention.

Written by Daniela Spinant
Edited by Honor Mahony

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Enlargement Talks Still On Track Despite Hurdles

EUOBSERVER / LUXEMBOURG - Representatives of the Spanish presidency and of the European Commission delivered reassurances on Tuesday that accession negotiations were on track, despite concerns fuelled by the failure of EU states to adopt a common position on negotiations on agriculture, and repeated comments that the political climate is less favorable to enlargement. "We stuck to our roadmap, despite the difficulty of complex issues under discussion at present," Spanish minister Ramon de Miguel said at the and of a negotiation round at ministerial level, in Luxembourg. "I think we are still on track to have everything completed by the end of the year," Mr de Miguel added.

The enlargement Commissioner, Günter Verheugen´s comments also sought to reassure: "I am pretty sure we will achieve everything before October, with the exception of financial issues," Mr Verheugen added. The commissioner urged the EU to deliver on its promises, as negotiations showed the candidate countries did their homework.

Hurdles on agriculture
Minister de Miguel hoped the 15 EU governments would agree on a common negotiation position on agriculture before the finish of the Spanish presidency, at the end of June, as required by the roadmap. However, the crucial issue of direct payments to farmers from candidate countries, which represent the financial bulk of negotiations on agriculture, would be excluded from such a common position. The 15 states failed to agree on whether direct payments should be granted to new countries, with Germany, Netherlands, Sweden and the UK opposing direct aid for newcomers. On Monday, the 15 vowed to reach an agreement on the issue at the Brussels summit in October, after the German elections.

Ten countries neck in neck
The negotiations on Monday and Tuesday brought back to "neck in neck" the ten countries which hope to join the Union in 2004, commented Verheugen. It also allowed Bulgaria to narrow the gap separating it from the group of ten countries set to join the Union in 2004. Bulgaria closed 20 negotiation chapters, while Malta, which hopes to join in 2004, closed 22, and Romania, the laggard, closed 11. However, commissioner Verheugen told the EUobserver this was not a significant development, as negotiations with Bulgaria progressed on the basis of commitments, and not yet on implementation of the acquis. Therefore, there was no decoupling between Bulgaria and Romania, although the principle of differentiation fully applied.

Verheugen: no artificial speeding up for laggards
The Commissioner in charge of enlargement, Günter Verheugen, said on Monday that negotiations with Bulgaria and Romania should not be artificially accelerated. It makes no sense to artificially open and close chapters, Mr Verheugen said, as negotiations in Brussels had to match the level of preparation in the two countries.

Commissioner Verheugen declined to confirm that he told the scrutiny committee of the Danish parliament that accession negotiations with Bulgaria and Romania should not be speeded up, as the two countries could by no means join the Union before 2007. Mr Verheugen told the EUobserver his discussion with the Danish parliament scrutiny committee was confidential, and therefore he could not unveil what was said. However, a summary of the discussion with the Danish scrutiny committee held on May 27 and obtained by the EUobserver, shows Mr Verheugen said accelerating negotiations with the two countries was not desirable.

Written by Daniela Spinant
Edited by Lisbeth Kirk

http://www.euobserver.com/index.phtml?sid=9&aid=6581
 

EU Leaders Plan To Use EU Force To Fight Terror

According to a draft declaration to be put forward by the heads of state at Seville, relations with third countries are to be reconsidered in light of their attitude towards terrorism.

SEVILLE/EUOBSERVER - The EU heads of state are set to announce on Saturday in Seville that they are considering the use of the EU rapid reaction force in the fight against terrorism, but the mandate of the EU can only be extended to cover terrorism through a change to the EU Treaty, as its tasks are embedded in the Nice Treaty. Diplomats told the EUobserver that Spain intends to put forward contributions to the Convention on the EU future, which is currently debating a new Treaty, with a view to enlarging the mandate of the EU force.

In a draft declaration on the contribution of the security and defense policy in the fight against terrorism to be adopted in Seville, the 15 recognize the contribution of the European security and defense policy to fight terror and announce plans to reconsider relations with third countries in the light of their attitude towards terrorism.

'Petersberg tasks' to be extended
The Spanish presidency of the European Union, who put the fight against terror at the top of its agenda, is pleading for the extension of the EU Rapid reaction force's mandate to fight against terrorism. Spain's representatives in the Convention on the EU future are set to present to the Convention proposals to add terrorism to the list of tasks of the EU force, which currently covers peacekeeping and humanitarian actions, the so called "Petersberg tasks". "The development of the European Security and Development Policy must take fuller account of the capabilities that may be required, in accordance with the Petersberg tasks and the provisions of the treaty, to combat terrorism," reads the declaration.

Anti-terrorism clauses in agreements with third countries
The EU leaders also plan to reconsider relations with third countries in light of their attitude towards terrorism and is considering the idea of providing assistance to third countries in order to reinforce their capacity to fight terrorism. They pledge to include anti-terrorism clauses in EU agreements with third countries and to upgrade the EU instruments to prevent and combat terror. "The European Council reiterates that the fight against terrorism will continue to be a priority objective of the European Union and a key plank of its external relations policy," reads the declaration of the 15 heads of state.

The EU heads of state say the EU security and defense policy should focus on conflict prevention, deepening political relations with third countries, including the promotion of human rights, to promote the fight against terrorism, and stepping up arrangements for sharing intelligence and assessment and early warning reports. Moreover, the EU should envisage military capabilities necessary to protect forces deployed in EU crisis management operations, and explore how military or civilian capabilities could be used to help protect civil populations against terrorist attacks.

http://www.euobserver.com/index.phtml?aid=6750
 

Germany Adds To EU President Proposals

Germany's proposal to have future Commission presidents elected by the parliament is taken one step further by the Netherlands, which wants direct elections of the president by the citizens.

The German government representative in the Convention on the Future of Europe, Peter Glotz, is ready to hand in this week a proposal on the future election of the EU Commission presidents.

According to Der Spiegel, the German government proposes that in future the EU Commission president should be elected by vote in the European Parliament. Some 40 per cent of the members of the Convention are in favor of the proposal, Mr Glotz said, according to Der Spiegel. The European Parliament would become stronger and the president better democratically legitimized," said Glotz.

Currently, the heads of states in the EU member countries elect the Commission President.

Spain, UK and France are likely to be opposed to the idea favoring instead a new strong EU president to be elected by the Council with a five year term in order to give Europe more political direction. On the other side the Netherlands would like to go further than Germany and support an EU Commission President being elected directly by the people.

It is however still unclear how the Commission president and a stronger president of the Council should stand in relation to one another in the future. In no case should the president of the Council become "Minster Europe" at the expense of the EU Commission President, according to Mr Glotz.

The British minister for Europe, Peter Hain, in an interview last week with the EUobserver argued that without a long-term full-time president, the EU will never be influential on the world stage and business will be done with the UK, France or Germany – something that would be of no benefit to small countries. However, a group of small countries including Austria, Belgium, Finland, Denmark and Luxembourg remain opposed to the idea of a powerful new council president.

http://www.euobserver.com/index.phtml?sid=9&aid=6892
 

EU Ready To Aid Palestinian Election
Ian Black in Brussels
The Guardian

The European Union is trying to paper over differences with the United States on the Middle East crisis and is preparing to assume a large-scale role in monitoring elections to a reformed Palestinian authority.
Underlining this effort, the EU announced yesterday that its foreign policy chiefs are to take part in talks convened by the US secretary of state, Colin Powell, to try to find a diplomatic path out of the current bloody impasse.

It also announced the despatch of a fact-finding mission to the Palestinian territories to examine conditions for observing elections early next year - signaling that it would pressure Israel to allow the poll to proceed.

Mr Powell has called a meeting of the so-called "Quartet" of the US, EU, United Nations and Russia in New York next Monday. It will be the highest-level international gathering on the Middle East since President George Bush's controversial speech last month. Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Morocco may also attend.

EU governments reacted with dismay to Mr Bush's demand that the Palestinians dump Yasser Arafat and reform their institutions while offering them only a "provisional" state.

Humiliatingly, it came just days after the EU had called for an international peace conference and described Mr Arafat as an "indispensable" partner. It was also seen as bowing to the terms dictated by the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon.

Since then, the US has severed links with the Palestinian leader while the EU continues to deal with him.

"For the Americans Arafat is no longer an interlocutor but we Europeans deal with elected people," one Brussels diplomat said. "We need to keep pushing the political track, because that was omitted by Bush."

But muted public reactions from the EU have underlined just how little it can do without Washington.

Chris Patten, the external affairs commissioner and a trenchant critic of US policy on Iraq and unilateralism, told the Guardian he wanted to "concentrate on the positive aspects" of Mr Bush's speech.

But he made clear that Israel had to be prepared to allow the elections to take place.

"In order to have a fair election the normal machinery of democracy has to be able to operate," he insisted. "If the West Bank is divided into cantonments and separated by barbed wire and tanks it's going to be difficult to have an election campaign.

"The worst thing that could happen would be for the territories to split up into a clutter of warlord-dominated towns and villages."

If the conditions are right, EU observers could monitor the poll, as they did when Mr Arafat was elected in 1996.

The EU will be represented at the New York talks by Per Stig Moeller, foreign minister of Denmark, which holds the union's presidency; Javier Solana, who represents all 15 governments, and Mr Patten.

Officials forming a Quartet "task force" meet in London today to discuss international financial support for the Palestinian Authority's 100-day reform plan.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,752360,00.html
 

U.S. Talk Of Iraq War Makes Europe Jittery 
Patrick E. Tyler The New York Times

LONDON The last thing Europe wants is to be accused of going wobbly on Iraq. But the American talk of overthrowing Saddam Hussein by military force is raising alarms in European governments.

They are saying that any American miscalculation could undermine the international coalition that is fighting against terrorism, and the broad-based diplomacy needed to solve the crisis between Israel and the Palestinians.

They also fear that a drive against Iraq would drive a wedge between Britain and the rest of Europe.

A French official said in an interview in Paris that some of President George W. Bush's conservative aides had become "obsessed about Iraq, while we are obsessed about achieving peace" between Israelis and Palestinians. "The important thing is to build a coalition for peace in the Middle East, not to build a coalition for war in Iraq," he said.

Washington's increasing talk of "regime change" is hindering diplomatic strategies to press Saddam to open his country again to United Nations inspectors searching for weapons of mass destruction, the French official said.

In Britain, a newspaper reported that Prime Minister Tony Blair is preparing for a significant call-up of military reserves in the fall and that he has pulled an armored division out of training exercises so it could be made available for special deployment his year.

In the House of Commons, Blair said that Britain has gathered extensive evidence that "Saddam Hussein is still trying to develop weapons of mass destruction" and that Britain would publish the evidence "at the appropriate time."

Last fall, the British government published the first detailed report that Osama bin Laden was directly linked to the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, thus laying down an important predicate for the war in Afghanistan.

There is agreement in European capitals that Saddam's government is dangerous and may need to be confronted one day. But any agreement breaks down over strategic priorities in the Middle East, which Europeans consider neighboring territory for trade and security.

With America the lone superpower, they are ever prickly over any hint that the United States is ignoring their views or assuming, as one German official said, "that we are Euro wimps" when it comes to the use of force.

The European Union's top security official, Javier Solana, warned in an interview of a "self-fulfilling prophecy" of war against Iraq. "If Saddam Hussein thinks that this option is inexorable, why would he yield to inspectors?" Solana said.

He said it would be "very, very difficult" to sustain allied support for an assault against Iraq unless progress is first made toward creating a Palestinian state.

The debate with Washington reminded The Economist magazine of Churchill's confidence that, "You can always rely on America to do the right thing, once it has exhausted the alternatives." The right thing, for Europe, is to concentrate first on getting Israelis and Palestinians to desist in a conflict that is roiling emotions and shaking governments across the Arab world.

One European leader said King Abdullah II of Jordan came to him "in tears" over recent reports that the Americans were thinking of attacking Iraq from Jordanian air bases, at a time when Arab frustration with the lack of progress on the peace front is soaring.

Besides the Middle East, Europeans point out that it is critical to achieve some stability in Afghanistan, where Western intervention has destroyed the Taliban, but has not assured that the interim government of Hamid Karzai will succeed as a stable replacement.

"There is a lot of understanding of U.S. impatience vis-á-vis Iraq," said an adviser to Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder of Germany. "At the same time there is a tremendous amount of concern about anything that would destabilize the situation in the Middle East," the adviser said. "Things are bad enough now and we don't need to worsen them."

European leaders, as well as most Arab states, have welcomed the meetings just held by Arab foreign ministers and Western governments on how to improve security for Israel against suicide bombers while at the same time moving toward negotiations that would realize the vision of a Palestinian state within three years.

Yet this American-backed initiative is barely a first step and will require months of intensive diplomacy to generate real progress, officials said.

"The timing is very narrow to get something going that changes the attitudes of Arab leaders and public opinion in the region," Solana said, especially if the United States wants to consider a military campaign in Iraq this winter.

There is also the question of the Palestinian elections in January, Solana said. Would they take place during a buildup for war in Iraq and under Israeli occupation? "It's going to be very difficult to have elections under these conditions," he said.

Interviews with officials in London, Paris and Berlin revealed striking agreement that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict represents the highest priority for Western governments, not only to end the carnage, but also to strengthen Western credibility in the face of the appeal of militant Muslims, who are exploiting the plight of the Palestinians to increase support for violence.

Blair's government, the United States' closest ally, distanced itself from Bush's call for the removal of the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, saying that it would do business with whomever the Palestinians elect.

A senior British official suggested that the United States should push harder for a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians because otherwise "it may not be possible" to build support for action in Iraq.

"We need to get the show back on the road," the official said, adding that "American energy" was essential to create the basis for new negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians.

Britain, too, has distinguished its position on a change of government in Iraq from the Bush administration's. "We believe that regime change is desirable, but ending the threat of weapons of mass destruction is our objective - getting the inspectors back in," the British official said.

As for a possible military campaign, the official continued, "Obviously, planning is going on."

He said that European criticism of Britain's support for American military intervention would not affect British policy. "Nobody wants to go into a war, but sometimes you can't avoid it," the official said. "We'll look after our own interests and if others are not as a resolute as us, then they're not, but we are not going to change our position because of it."

Britain's determination to remain shoulder to shoulder with the United States still leaves major questions hanging over the prospect of any campaign in Iraq.

In London, Paris and Berlin, the fundamental questions posed to Washington have been the same:

Who would guarantee the territorial integrity of Iraq after a war? What government would replace Saddam Hussein's? Is America prepared to invade and occupy Iraq for a decade or more to protect a successor government from subversion and attack from Iraq's neighbors, Iran and Syria? Who would pay for the war?

"The questions have been asked, but the answers have not been given," a French official said.

Foreign minister Joschka Fischer of Germany said, "We will be directly hurt if there would be a miscalculation."

Fischer expressed doubt in an interview that Saddam represented a strategic threat to Western security. He indicated that he was more concerned about the threat to European security from a new war in the region that might further inflame the passions of Arabs who want to see an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories.

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Blair Urges EU To Create Next Superpower
The Associated Press

LONDON - Europe needs to stop complaining about the United States and instead pool its military resources to become a superpower on par with America, Prime Minister Tony Blair said.

In a wide-ranging interview published in this month's issue of the political magazine Prospect, Blair said there was "a certain scratchiness" in European Union's relations with the United States, an apparent reference to countries including France and Germany that have expressed concern at U.S. talk of overthrowing Iraqi president Saddam Hussein.

"My challenge to Europe is this: if we want to have greater sway and greater power, then instead of complaining about America, we've got to face up to what we need to do," Blair said in the interview, excerpts of which appeared in The Independent newspaper Wednesday.

"That means developing a coherent defense capability and a set of institutions to allow Europe to speak strongly."

The United States says Saddam is a sponsor of international terrorism and seeks nuclear weapons. But allies have shown little appetite for a military campaign to oust him without hard evidence that Iraq had a role in the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.

The prime minister, a strong U.S. ally, said if the time comes for action against Iraq, "people will have the evidence presented to them" to show that Saddam "is trying to acquire weapons of mass destruction, in particular a nuclear capability."

Blair said some European criticism of America "comes from an irritation with their huge superpower status. If we pool our sovereignty in a way that gives us a strong voice and, if we improve our defense capability, we will be the strategic partner that America needs and wants."

European allies spend about 1.8 percent of their gross domestic product on defense, compared with the United States' 3 percent.

Plans to create an EU defense force with up to 60,000 soldiers in a rapid-reaction peacekeeping unit have stalled because Greece objects to a deal that would allow Turkey to veto deployment in its region. Turkey is a member of NATO but not the EU.

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Arab Envoys Approach Europeans On UN Mideast Text

By Evelyn Leopold

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Faced with U.S. opposition, Arab envoys attempt on Tuesday to convince Europeans on the U.N. Security Council to support a resolution demanding Israel withdraw from Palestinian cities following last week's deadly raid in Gaza, diplomats said.

If enough nations on the 15-member body agree to negotiations on the text, Syria, the only Arab member of the body, could push it to a vote, forcing the United States to cast the sole veto.

Alternatively, the Arab nations could negotiate with Washington, but the United States has set conditions for any future resolution on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict which would be difficult to negotiate, council sources said.

"We had further discussions to see whether there was any progress on the draft the Arab group put down," said British Ambassador Sir Jeremy Greenstock. "That job did make further progress," he said without elaborating.

After meeting among themselves on Monday, diplomats said Arab ambassadors intended to talk with Europeans on the council, including France, Ireland, Norway and Britain, which currently holds the rotating presidency.

In a change of tactics, U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte told the council last week that any future resolution on the Israeli-Palestinian crisis would have to condemn by name the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, the Islamic Jihad and Hamas, groups that have claimed responsibility for suicide attacks on Israel.

He also said the council had to demand improvement of the security situation as a condition for any call for a withdrawal of Israeli armed forces to positions they held before the September 2000 start of the latest Palestinian uprising, in which 1,467 Palestinians and 564 Israelis have died.

The U.S. objective, the diplomats said, was to squelch another resolution while there was hope for diplomatic progress.

Arab nations first put forward the draft resolution last Wednesday, two days after an Israeli air strike that killed 15 Palestinians in Gaza City, including nine children and a wanted Hamas leader.

The text demands the "withdrawal of the Israeli occupying forces from Palestinian cities" to positions held before September 2000. It expresses concern at the "extrajudicial execution" in Gaza City and alarm at the reoccupation of Palestinian cities and calls for an end to all violence, military action and "acts of terror."

It also appeals to both Israelis and Palestinians to cooperate fully in efforts to resume peace talks.

Nasser al-Kidwa, the Palestinian U.N. observer, said earlier that the Arab draft "was designed to strike a very reasonable consensus" and suggested Negroponte "either doesn't want agreement or is being completely unreasonable" and "doesn't want action by the Security Council."

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EU Poll Reveals Huge Ignorance
By Oana Lungescu in Brussels

An opinion poll conducted in all the 15 nations of the European Union has found that most Europeans either don't know or don't care about what their leaders call the union's historic challenges - the introduction of the euro notes and coins, and the expansion into Central and Eastern Europe.

Some 78% say they are not well informed about the Union's eastward expansion, and a staggering 87% feel uninvolved in the political debate about its pros and cons.

The Eurobarometer poll, conducted in March and April, also showed there is continuing confusion about which countries are candidates to join the EU.

The poll shows support for Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic becoming members, and clear opposition to EU membership for Albania, Turkey and Yugoslavia.

But over 20% of EU citizens believe Norway and Switzerland should be among the first to join, even though they have decided to stay out.

And some Italians who consider themselves well-informed actually think that the UK is also a candidate country, although it joined in 1973.

With only six months to go before the introduction of the euro notes and coins, only 20% of Europeans know the exact value of their currency against the euro, and many believe it will also be used in Britain, Denmark and Sweden, which have opted out of the euro-zone.

Apathy

While Belgians seem better informed about the euro, they, like most Europeans, appear uninterested in a public debate on the EU's future shape and powers.

This is bad news for their political leaders, who want to launch exactly such a debate at an EU summit in Laeken, near Brussels, next December.

They can only hope it will attract more public interest than last December's summit in Nice - 41% of EU citizens say they did not see, read or hear anything about it.

And, with high levels of ignorance about enlargement and apathy about European matters in Ireland, it will be an uphill struggle to reverse last month's rejection of the Treaty of Nice by Irish voters, which threatens to block enlargement altogether.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/1419136.stm