Zapatero is moving fast in international affair. After going first to Rabat, he went to Paris where the creation of a new Berlin-Madrid-Paris troika was announced. The participation of a middle size country might have a significant impact on European dynamics.
It has been officially said that Madrid will play a role in the relationships with the Magreb, that is with part of the Arab and Muslim world. Spain is in an excellent position to be a bridge between many worlds.
El País - Chirac anuncia la creación de un nuevo eje Berlín-Paris-Madrid
Chirac anuncia formalmente la creación de un nuevo eje Berlín-París-Madrid
España y Francia cooperarán para resolver en seis meses el conflicto del Sáhara
PERU EGURBIDE / ENVIADO ESPECIAL - París
EL PAÍS | España - 30-04-2004
El acercamiento de España al eje Berlín-París no es ya una colaboración ocasional ni una promesa de futuro, como podía deducirse de las palabras pronunciadas el miércoles en Berlín por el canciller alemán, Gerhard Schröder. El presidente de la República Francesa, Jacques Chirac, confirmó anoche en París que se ha puesto en marcha un auténtico eje Berlín-París-Madrid suficientemente estructurado y con voluntad de acción cotidiana. Una de sus consecuencias inmediatas será la cooperación hispano-francesa para resolver "en seis meses" el conflicto del Sáhara. Fue el presidente del Gobierno, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, quien habló del plazo de seis meses para resolver el conflicto del Sáhara, sorprendente si se tiene en cuenta que el contencioso entre Marruecos y el Frente Polisario, con Argelia en la retaguardia, data de los años setenta del siglo pasado. Francia y España han estado, además, tradicionalmente, en campos distintos de esta contienda. París ha apoyado siempre a Rabat, mientras que Madrid, desalojada de su ex colonia por la fuerza de la Marcha Verde, sustentaba más o menos abiertamente las tesis independentistas del Polisario.
Durante años, el Gobierno español ha defendido la necesidad de una solución aceptada por las dos partes, y eso es lo que sigue haciendo ahora, según expresó ayer Zapatero. Pero el nuevo presidente ve la posibilidad de cooperar con Francia en este campo, donde en el pasado reciente Madrid y París se habían mostrado en competencia, para alcanzar un acuerdo "que satisfará a todas las partes". "Es posible hacerlo en seis meses", añadió.
Chirac, por su parte, se mostró convencido de que España debe jugar un papel "eminente" en el Magreb y afirmó que, por lo que se refiere a esa región y, por tanto, al conflicto del Sáhara, París, Madrid y Berlín desarrollarán "una cooperación especialmente reforzada" en el seno del Consejo de Seguridad de Naciones Unidas.
"Eminente" es también el papel que, según Chirac, le va a corresponder a España en la construcción europea tras su incorporación inmediata al eje París-Berlín que, precisó el presidente galo, promueve una Europa "de paz y democracia, de desarrollo económico, pero también social, de un gran pacto social".
Chirac utilizó reiteradamente la expresión "la main dans la main [de la mano]", para describir la voluntad "muy fuerte de París y Berlín de avanzar con España en la ruta europea". "Hemos decidido una cooperación consciente y diaria entre nuestros colaboradores y autoridades para afrontar todos los problemas que se plantean".
El presidente francés se extendió en una larga explicación sobre cómo esa cooperación es posible y aconsejable. "El enfoque que hemos venido observando de la construcción europea defendido por el Gobierno José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero es el mismo que el de la mayor parte de los países europeos y, en particular, de Francia y Alemania. Eso no quiere decir que estemos de acuerdo en todo, pero si hay diferencias de enfoque, estamos determinados a trabajar juntos para reducirlas", expuso Chirac.
"También tenemos muchas diferencias de punto de vista con nuestros amigos alemanes, pero las superamos siempre, porque eso nos interesa más hacerlo", añadió. "El problema de la financiación de la UE es uno de ellos", prosiguió. "España tiene una posición optimista, que es la de la Comisión, y entendemos muy bien que España defienda sus intereses. Es completamente legítimo. Alemania y Francia, que son contribuyentes netos [al presupuesto comunitario] y tienen problemas financieros, ven con más reticencia el aumento del gasto, y es lógico".
"En esas circunstancias, se puede hacer dos cosas: reñir, lo que nunca trae nada bueno, o dialogar para encontrar una solución. Eso es lo que vamos a hacer, naturalmente", concluyó.
Zapatero confirmó, por otro lado, que su Gobierno "ha cambiado de posición" sobre el reparto de votos en el Consejo Europeo, ya que "ha aceptado el sistema de la doble mayoría" propuesto por Francia y Alemania. Pero declinó entrar en más detalles sobre la negociación ya iniciada para definir los criterios del nuevos sistema.
Zapatero tuvo palabras de especial agradecimiento a Francia, "al pueblo francés" y a sus gobernantes por la cooperación en la lucha contra ETA, que "es un buen ejemplo de lucha contra el terrorismo, el camino que hay que seguir", dijo, en contraposición implícitam con la invasión de Irak. "Hubiera debido yo mencionar el tema", le replicó Chirac, "pero me parece tan obvio que olvidé hacerlo. La colaboración contra el terrorismo y especialmente contra ETA es una posición firme y permanente del Gobierno francés".
In a press conference Jacques Chirac postponed the possibility of accepting Turkey in the EU for 10 to 15 more years. One of the parties of his majority coalition opposes it. The French President said that it is "an important issue" and that it should be accpeted trhough parliamentary vote or referendum by all EU members. This could be a verylong process indeed...
Le Monde - Chirac repousse à dix ans l'adhésion de la Turquie
Chirac repousse à dix ans l'adhésion de la Turquie
LEMONDE.FR | 29.04.04 | 13h59 • MIS A JOUR LE 29.04.04 | 15h20
Au cours de sa conférence de presse, jeudi 29 avril, à l'Elysée, consacrée à l'élargissement de l'Union européenne, le 1er mai, le président de la République, Jacques Chirac, évoqué l'ensemble des sujets liés à la construction européenne, de la ratification du traité portant sur la Constitution européenne à la candidature de la Turquie à l'Union, via l'Europe sociale et la puissance économique européenne dans le monde avec le passage à une Union à 25 membres.
Le président Jacques Chirac s'est adressé directement aux Français, jeudi 29 avril, lors d'une conférence de presse, à l'Elysée, devant près de 200 journalistes. En ouvrant la conférence sur sa vision de l'Europe, le président Chirac a insisté sur le moment historique que vont vivre les Européens avec l'élargissement à vingt-cinq membres de l'Union européenne.
Lors de la conférence de presse, le président Chirac a déclaré qu'il était "prématuré" de choisir entre la voie parlementaire et la voie référendaire pour adopter la Constitution européenne. Il fallait d'abord "procéder par étapes". Le Conseil européen des 17 et 18 juin devra se mettre d'accord sur le projet, puis les Etats devront le signer. Enfin, une fois en conformité avec la Constitution, selon l'article 54, qui impliquera une révision de la Loi fondamentale, "il reviendra aux Français de décider par voie référendaire ou voie parlementaire de l'adopter".
Sur la Turquie, dont l'adhésion est rejetée par l'UMP, le parti du président, et l'UDF, le président a affirmé que la question est "importante". "La Turquie a une vocation européenne depuis plusieurs siècles", a-t-il poursuivi. Mais il a rappelé que plusieurs éléments étaient nécessaires avant d'arrêter une position. La candidature turque soulève "deux questions : l'adhésion de la Turquie est elle souhaitable ? Et cette adhésion est-elle possible ?". Pour la première question, la réponse du président est "non". "La Turquie doit respecter les conditions d'adhésion. Ce n'est pas le cas", a-t-il déclaré. "La Turquie a déjà fait de profondes réformes pour s'adapter aux critères de Copenhague", selon le chef de l'Etat. "Mais encore faut-il les appliquer sur le terrain", a-t-il souligné.
Le président a rappelé la procédure d'adhésion : "La Commission européenne remettra son rapport au Conseil européen, qui devra prendre une décision. Soit le Conseil européen jugera qu'il est prématuré d'ouvrir des négociations et qu'il faudra attendre encore quelque temps avant de les engager. Soit il estimera que la Turquie remplit les critères de Copenhague et que les négociations pourront commencer dès 2005. Mais la vraie question est celle qui sera posée à chaque peuple de l'Union. Le dernier mot leur reviendra, soit par voie référendaire, soit par voie parlementaire." Mais pour la Turquie, le président a déclaré que les négociations pouvaient durer dix à quinze ans.
A propos de l'Europe sociale ou l'Europe libérale, le président a estimé que "suivre à fond l'une des deux dynamiques conduirait à une impasse. Il faut être réaliste". La France, a-t-il rappelé, est en tête du mouvement en faveur d'une Europe sociale, en matière de défense des services publics, de dialogue social, d'échange entre les partenaires sociaux et de coordination des politiques d'emploi. Le président a rappelé que "la France n'est pas suivie pas tous", notamment la "Grande-Bretagne", dont l'approche est plus libérale.
S'agissant de l'Irak, l'Union européenne fait confiance aux propositions de l'envoyé spécial de l'ONU, M. Brahimi, sur la reconstruction politique et économique du pays. Il a plaidé pour un transfert de souveraineté "urgent" en Irak "sous le contrôle effectif des Nations unies". Le président français a estimé qu'une solution fondée "sur une ambiguïté" concernant le partage des pouvoirs entre les forces de coalition et l'ONU serait "désastreuse". "Nous estimons qu'il est urgent, aujourd'hui, de rendre leur souveraineté aux Irakiens", a-t-il dit. Aujourd'hui, a souligné le président, "l'heure n'est plus à la fracture de l'Union européenne", mais il constate "l'émergence d'une conscience européenne à l'échelle des populations". Il se dit persuadé que les vingt-cinq membres de l'Union européenne approuveront à l'unanimité les propositions du représentant des Nations unies en Irak.
Sur le calendrier de l'élargissement, le président a insisté sur la détermination de l'Europe, notamment de la France, à respecter l'engagement d'accepter la Roumanie et la Bulgarie à partir de 2007 dans l'espace de l'Union.
Quant à la force de l'euro et au rôle économique de l'Union, Jacques Chirac a rappelé qu'il était favorable au texte de la Convention et hostile à tout changement en matière de politique monétaire, financière et économique.
Sur les autres sujets, comme la reconnaissance du génocide des Arméniens en préalable à l'entrée de la Turquie ou le plan Sharon dans les territoires palestiniens, le président Jacques Chirac a souligné qu'il ne fallait pas que "les problèmes bilatéraux interfèrent dans les critères d'adhésion" et qu'il se réjouissait que "de nouvelles perspectives s'ouvrent entre l'Arménie et la Turquie". A propos du plan Sharon, le président français a estimé que toute initiative unilatérale, comme le retrait de Gaza proposé par le premier ministre israélien, était "vouée à l'échec".
Lemonde.fr
A few days before the crucial birth-day of the EU enlargement (May 1), the Greek population of Cyprus voted against the "fusion" with the Turkish side of the island. By this, they basically excluded the Turkish Cyprus from the European Union. Paradoxically, this ended up approaching the Cyprian Turkish people to Europe (EU foreign ministers decided to help the Turkish side with 259 million Euros, and a partial suspension of the embargo).
Tomorrow, Le Monde will publish a special 20-page issue ("L'Europe, un continent neuf") dedicated to the enlargement. I hope it will be available online.
For us, the "old" Europeans, all this is a big deal. Can you imagine? 25 members, 188 regions, 450 million citizens, and 20 languages...
Being a "European citizen" is much more exiting than being just an Italian one!
This New York Times story is about a small group of young Pakistani-British who have turned openly simpathetic to Al Qaeda. It evokes exactly what many Europeans fear most: that Muslim immigrants may become (or already are) "the Inside Enemy". This fear seems more acute in Europe than in the US.
By PATRICK E. TYLER
and DON VAN NATTA Jr.
LUTON, England, April 24 — The call to jihad is rising in the streets of Europe, and is being answered, counterterrorism officials say.
In this former industrial town north of London, a small group of young Britons whose parents emigrated from Pakistan after World War II have turned against their families' new home. They say they would like to see Prime Minister Tony Blair dead or deposed and an Islamic flag hanging outside No. 10 Downing Street.
They swear allegiance to Osama bin Laden and his goal of toppling Western democracies to establish an Islamic superstate under Shariah law, like Afghanistan under the Taliban. They call the Sept. 11 hijackers the "Magnificent 19" and regard the Madrid train bombings as a clever way to drive a wedge into Europe.
On Thursday evening, at a tennis center community hall in Slough, west of London, their leader, Sheik Omar Bakri Mohammad, spoke of his adherence to Osama bin Laden. If Europe fails to heed Mr. bin Laden's offer of a truce — provided that all foreign troops are withdrawn from Iraq in three months — Muslims will no longer be restrained from attacking the Western countries that play host to them, the sheik said.
"All Muslims of the West will be obliged," he said, to "become his sword" in a new battle. Europeans take heed, he added, saying, "It is foolish to fight people who want death — that is what they are looking for."
On working-class streets of old industrial towns like Crawley, Luton, Birmingham and Manchester, and in the Arab enclaves of Germany, France, Switzerland and other parts of Europe, intelligence officials say a fervor for militancy is intensifying and becoming more open.
In Hamburg, Dr. Mustafa Yoldas, the director of the Council of Islamic Communities, saw a correlation to the discord in Iraq. "This is a very dangerous situation at the moment," Dr. Yoldas said. "My impression is that Muslims have become more and more angry against the United States."
Hundreds of young Muslim men are answering the call of militant groups affiliated or aligned with Al Qaeda, intelligence and counterterrorism officials in the region say.
Even more worrying, said a senior counterterrorism official, is that the level of "chatter" — communications among people suspected of terrorism and their supporters — has markedly increased since Mr. bin Laden's warning to Europe this month. The spike in chatter has given rise to acute worries that planning for another strike in Europe is advanced.
"Iraq dramatically strengthened their recruitment efforts," one counterterrorism official said. He added that some mosques now display photos of American soldiers fighting in Iraq alongside bloody scenes of bombed out Iraqi neighborhoods. Detecting actual recruitments is almost impossible, he said, because it is typically done face to face.
And recruitment is paired with a compelling new strategy to bring the fight to Europe.
Members of Al Qaeda have "proven themselves to be extremely opportunistic, and they have decided to try to split the Western alliance," the official continued. "They are focusing their energies on attacking the big countries" — the United States, Britain and Spain — so as to "scare" the smaller states.
Some Muslim recruits are going to Iraq, counterterrorism officials in Europe say, but more are remaining home, possibly joining cells that could help with terror logistics or begin operations like the one that came to notice when the British police seized 1,200 pounds of ammonium nitrate, a key bomb ingredient, in late March, and arrested nine Pakistani-Britons, five of whom have been charged with trying to build a terrorist bomb.
Stoking that anger are some of the same fiery Islamic clerics who preached violence and martyrdom before the Sept. 11 attacks.
On Friday, Abu Hamza, the cleric accused of tutoring Richard Reid before he tried to blow up a Paris-to-Miami jetliner with explosives hidden in his shoe, urged a crowd of 200 outside his former Finsbury Park mosque to embrace death and the "culture of martyrdom."
Though the British home secretary, David Blunkett, has sought to strip Abu Hamza of his British citizenship and deport him, the legal battle has dragged on for years while Abu Hamza keeps calling down the wrath of God.
Also this week, over Mr. Blunkett's vigorous objection, a 35-year-old Algerian held under emergency laws passed after Sept. 11 was released from Belmarsh Prison. The man, identified only as "G," suffered from severe mental illness, his lawyers told a special immigration appeals panel, which let him out of prison and put him under house arrest.
Mr. Blunkett insisted that that should not be the final judgment on a man already found by one court "to be a threat to life and liberty."
In an interview on the BBC over the weekend, Mr. Blunkett advocated a stronger deportation policy, initially focused on 12 foreign terror suspects held without charge since the Sept. 11 attacks.
Despite tougher antiterrorism laws, the police, prosecutors and intelligence chiefs across Europe say they are struggling to contain the openly seditious speech of Islamic extremists, some of whom, they say, have been inciting young men to suicidal violence since the 1990's.
One chapter in Sheik Omar's lectures these days is "The Psyche of Muslims for Suicide Bombing."
The authorities say that laws to protect religious expression and civil liberties have the result of limiting what they can do to stop hateful speech. In the case of foreigners, they say they are often left to seek deportation, a lengthy and uncertain process subject to legal appeals, when the suspect can keep inciting attacks.
That leaves the authorities to resort to less effective means, such as mouse-trapping Islamic radicals with immigration violations in hopes of making a deportation case stick. "In many countries, the laws are liberal and it's not easy," an official said.
At a mosque in Geneva, an imam recently exhorted his followers to "impose the will of Islam on the godless society of the West."
"It was quite virulent," said a senior official with knowledge of the sermon. "The imam was encouraging his followers to take over the godless society."
While such a sermon may be incitement, recruitment takes a more shadowy course, and is hard to detect, a senior antiterrorism official said. "Believers are appealed to in the mosques, but the real conversations take place in restaurants or cafes or private apartments," the official said.
While some clerics, like Abu Qatada — said to be the spiritual counselor of Mohamed Atta, who led the Sept. 11 hijacking team — remain in prison in Britain without charge, others like Sheik Omar, leader of a movement called Al Muhajiroun, carry on a robust ideological campaign.
"There is no case against me," Sheik Omar said in an interview. Referring to calls by members of Parliament that he be deported, he added, "but they are Jewish" and "they have been calling for that for years."
Among his ardent followers is Ishtiaq Alamgir, 24, who heads Al Muhajiroun in Luton and calls himself Sayful Islam, the sword of Islam. He says there are about 50 members here but exact numbers are secret.
Most days, he and a handful of his followers run a recruitment stand on Dunstable Road much to the chagrin of the Muslim elders of Luton.
Mainstream Muslims are outraged by the situation, saying the actions of a few are causing their communities to be singled out for surveillance and making the larger population distrustful of them.
Muhammad Sulaiman, a stalwart of the mainstream Central Mosque here, was penniless when he arrived from the Kashmiri frontier of Pakistan in 1956. He raised money to build the Central Mosque here and now leads a campaign to ban Al Muhajiroun radicals from the city's 10 mosques.
"This is show-off business," he says in accented English. "I don't want these kids in my mosque."
Other community leaders look to the government to do something, if only to help prevent the demonization of British Muslims, or "Islamophobia," as some here call it.
"I think these kids are being brainwashed by a few radical clerics," said Akhbar Dad Khan, another elder of the Central Mosque. He wants them prosecuted or deported. "We should be able to control this negativity," he said.
In Slough, Sheik Omar spent much of his time Thursday night regaling his young followers with the erotic delights of paradise — sweet kisses and the pleasures of bathing with scores of women — while he also preached the virtues of death in Islamic struggle as a ticket to paradise.
He spoke of terrorism as the new norm of cultural conflict, "the fashion of the 21st century," practiced as much by Tony Blair as by Al Qaeda.
"We may be caught up in the target as the people of Manhattan were," he told them.
And he warned Western leaders, "You may kill bin Laden, but the phenomenon, you cannot kill it — you cannot destroy it."
"Our Muslim brothers from abroad will come one day and conquer here and then we will live under Islam in dignity," he said.
Patrick E. Tyler reported from Luton, Slough and London and Don Van Natta Jr. from London. Souad Mekhennet contributed reporting from Germany.
European's know their common cultural past, but they ignore each other's contemporary artists and intellectuals, writes Alan Riding who adds: "As Europe moves toward "ever closer union," unless it also communicates culturally, popular taste will become ever more American."
The article mentions a number of limited efforts, explaining that they are unsuccessful, while failing to underline that they are numerous. This could be an excellent image of what we are seeing in other fields: myriads of small things contributing unsatisfactorily to a greater integration because they pale in comparison to the idea of Europe. These perceptions are not incompatible, and we should learn to deal with them if we want to better understand what's really happening.
The New York Times - A Common Culture (From the U.S.A.) Binds Europeans Ever Closer
A Common Culture (From the U.S.A.) Binds Europeans Ever Closer
By ALAN RIDING
PARIS, April 22 — As 10 new countries prepare to enter the European Union on May 1, it is not so much economic weight or political tradition that has earned them the right to join the regional bloc. Rather, it is a certain cultural identity forged by Christianity and a common artistic heritage. In one crucial sense, then, the lingua franca of this expanded Europe remains that of Shakespeare, Leonardo, Mozart and other giants of the past.
Turn to the contemporary arts, however, and a different picture emerges. Here the union's old and new members alike know surprisingly little about one another's artistic inventiveness today. Creative life may be flourishing in widely different ways across Europe, but the most common cultural link across the region now is a devotion to American popular culture in the form of movies, television and music. In a Europe committed to seeking "ever closer union," where a dozen countries already share a currency, culture seems to have fallen out of step. Even as Europeans visit one another's cities and beaches more than ever, national self-obsessions prevail in the visual arts, new plays, literature, contemporary classical music, pop music and movies.
Does this lack of cohesion matter? Is it not enough for European culture to be sustained by the masters of the Italian Renaissance, the Spanish Golden Age and French Impressionism, by composers from Bach to Janacek, by writers of the stature of Cervantes, Goethe and Voltaire, by thinkers like Erasmus, Locke and Hegel? In their day these heavyweights also had only elitist audiences.
Since World War II, however, has come the massification of culture. In response Europeans have tried to reinforce national and regional identities, to hold onto their languages, foods and folkloric traditions. But given the option of American-style entertainment, they show little interest in one another's arts. It may simply be lack of information: European newspapers offer poor coverage of their neighbors' art scenes, and television is not much better, with the exception of the French-German network Arte. Whatever the reason, artistic endeavors that do cross borders today reach few people.
In movies European artists know whom to blame. The region's movie industries constantly bemoan the power of Hollywood, which for the most part leaves local films less than 15 percent of the box office even in cinephile countries like Italy and Germany. France in turn uses Hollywood to justify generous government subsidies and other privileges that enable its movie industry to control about one-third of the local market.
Yet three decades after the wellsprings of Fellini, Bergman and Truffaut, Europeans now rarely choose to see one another's films. In 2002, a good year for French cinema, 50 percent of the box office went to American movies and 35 percent to French movies, but only 4.9 percent to British films, 0.8 percent to German and 0.2 percent to Italian. And in Spain last year, Hollywood had 67 percent of the movie market, Spain 15.8 percent, Britain 5.7 percent, France 2.6 percent and Germany just 1.2 percent.
The failure of Europe's contemporary arts to enter the mainstream may help explain the plethora of the more rarefied arts festivals in the region, not only the film jamborees of Cannes, Venice and Berlin but also myriad dance and music festivals. (Dance and music, not requiring words, are more exportable.) Similarly summer theater festivals in Edinburgh and Avignon, France, invite productions from throughout Europe, yet few shows that are not local become commercial hits. In 1996 Yasmina Reza's "Art" was the first play by a living French writer to reach London's West End in 40 years.
Organizations like the British Council, the French Association for Artistic Action, Germany's Goethe Institute and Spain's Cervantes Institute actively promote their countries' cultures. And Europe's performing arts can be seen at, say, the Barbican Center in London, the Centro Cultural de Belêm, Lisbon, and the Théâtre National de l'Odéon in Paris. Yet these efforts touch a minority.
The visual arts are a case in point. Europe's museums may be crowded, yet many Europeans would struggle to name the leading living artists of France (Christian Boltanski, Annette Messager, Sophie Calle) or Spain (Antoni Tàpies, Miquel Barceló) or Germany (Sigmar Polke, Georg Baselitz, Anselm Kiefer). Even Lucian Freud, generally considered Britain's greatest living painter, speaks little to Continental Europeans.
Many Britons have at least heard of their own Y.B.A.'s — Young British Artists — because of clever marketing by the collector Charles Saatchi. Yet Damien Hirst of dissected shark renown and Tracey Emin of the "slept-in" love bed have become household names in Britain more as "enfants terribles" than as artists.
In the case of books, "Harry Potter" is everywhere, but best-seller lists in Europe are generally dominated by national authors. A few have a European audience, like Italy's Umberto Eco, Germany's Günter Grass and recently Spain's Carlos Ruiz Zafón, whose "Shadow of the Wind" comes out in English this month. But most nonnational best sellers come from popular American writers, currently Dan Brown with "The Da Vinci Code," but also frequently John Grisham and Patricia Cornwell or recently Michael Moore.
American and British writing clearly profits from the English language: European publishers can read books in English, while those in other languages must usually be translated before being judged.
More surprisingly, while modeled after American "sound," even European pop music rarely crosses the region's borders, as if Europeans were accustomed to lyrics in English but not in other languages. The Rolling Stones can fill stadiums across the region, but no other European rock group could do so outside its own country. And France's undying love for its aging rock star Johnny Hallyday still mystifies other Europeans.
Does this separateness matter? Perhaps it represents the cultural diversity that Europeans continue to covet. Yet if Europeans remain focused on the riches of the past and ignore one another's contemporary work, there may also be a price. As Europe moves toward "ever closer union," unless it also communicates culturally, popular taste will become ever more American.
This is a little peach of a story. As I run around reporting on static between U.S. and European defense constractors, here's a nice piece in the New York Times and the BBC about NATO awarding a contract for 4 billion euros to a trans-Atlantic consortium, led by EADS and Northrup Grumman. Perhaps this will usher in a new dawn of joint procurement for the alliance, the Times reports.
Cooperation throughout Europe is something we've heard, European companies wanting in on juicy U.S. defense contracts, but is this really a new cooperation across the Atlantic?
There was another bidder, also a trans-Atlantic consortium.
New York Times - New Unity on Contracts Seen in NATO
BBC - EADS wins 'eye in sky' contract
April 16, 2004
New Unity on Contracts Seen in NATO
By KATRIN BENHOLD
ARIS, April 15 - With NATO member states just days away from awarding a military contract for 4 billion euros to a trans-Atlantic consortium of aerospace companies, a new era of joint procurement may be dawning for the alliance, defense experts said on Thursday.
A group of six companies, led by the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company, known as EADS, and Northrop Grumman of the United States, looks set to win the contract, worth $4.8 billion, to build a mixed fleet of manned and unmanned surveillance aircraft for the alliance by 2010, said a NATO official close to the selection process.
Since procurement experts at NATO's Brussels headquarters put their support behind the EADS-Northrop consortium, officials in national capitals are expected to approve that decision "within days,'' the official said.
"It seems to be a genuine multinational procurement decision, and that is quite a significant step for cooperation in this area," said Steven Everts, a military expert at the Center for European Reform, a research group in London. "There is an acceleration of the desire to cooperate more closely within the E.U. and across the Atlantic.''
Against a backdrop of violence in Iraq and heightened concerns that terrorists may be aiming at Europe after the Madrid train bombings, pragmatism may be gaining the upper hand over the political procurement decisions of the past, analysts said. While some major European governments continue to disagree with the United States on a wide range of issues, including the war in Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the willingness to deepen their cooperation within NATO may herald a renewed commitment to the alliance.
James Appathurai, a spokesman for NATO, called the decision "historic,'' confirming a report on Thursday in The Financial Times.
"This is only the second time in NATO's history that members join forces in procurement on this scale,'' he said. The first time, he said, was the Awacs surveillance system developed in the 1960's.
"The decision was reached pragmatically on the basis of price, capability and scheduling considerations - not necessarily three factors that have determined procurement decisions in the past,'' Mr. Appathurai said.
Governments have preferred to keep national control of procurement, both to determine the exact nature of a project and to award contracts to the titans of a country's military industry.
As a result, military capacities within the European Union, where most countries also belong to NATO, have often been duplicated.
The idea for a joint fleet of air-to-ground surveillance aircraft has been considered for about a decade at NATO, Mr. Appathurai said. Recent progress on the matter "reflects a realization on the part of NATO nations that our troops are out there in the field, and they need this type of cooperation,'' he said.
This evolving pragmatism is rooted at least in part in financial reality. With technology becoming more sophisticated and expensive, collective procurement makes financial sense, analysts said. In addition, recent sluggishness in the global economy has depleted national coffers, leaving less room for governments to bolster military budgets.
"Pooling is the way to go,'' Mr. Everts of the Center for European Reform said. "It's good news for taxpayers and also good news for political cooperation that common sense has won.''
The EADS-Northrop consortium includes Galileo Avionica of Italy, General Dynamics Canada, Indra of Spain, and Thales of France. In addition, more than 80 other companies from NATO countries support the joint proposal, which would provide a mixed fleet of manned A320 Airbus planes and unmanned Global Hawk planes.
According to Alexander Reinhardt, an EADS spokesman, the price for an A320 is about 50 million euros, or $59.8 million, though a modified version for intelligence purposes might vary in price. The Global Hawk aircraft that Northrop has been building for the United States Air Force costs about $30 million, James Stratford, a spokesman for the company, said.
A competing consortium, led by Raytheon of the United States and including Siemens of Germany and Marconi of Britain, has complained that NATO's procurement officials took too little time to examine the two proposals, which were submitted four months ago. Mr. Appathurai of NATO rejected the complaint.
BBC
EADS wins 'eye in sky' contract
A consortium led by European aerospace company EADS has won a contract to supply a multi-billion-dollar surveillance system to Nato.
The alliance said it aimed to sign a contract for the "eye in the sky" programme - which is expected to enter service in 2010 - by spring next year.
Under the deal, the group will supply Nato with a system that uses aircraft, unmanned drones and ground systems.
The deal is though to be worth up to four billion euros ($4.9bn, £2.7bn).
Nato said the new equipment "will be essential enabling capability for the Nato Response Force and will provide... an invaluable Eye in the Sky".
It added that the system would gather information about what was happening on the ground during peacetime, crisis or war.
EADS Airbus A321 planes will be among those provided as part of the surveillance system.
Good news
Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics Canada, French defence firm Thales, Spain's Indra and Italy's Galileo Avionica were among the companies in the winning EADS-led consortium.
A spokesman for EADS - the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company - in Munich said: "We are pleased with this decision."
He declined to give financial details but said further information would be released next week.
US rival Raytheon had led another consortium bidding for the contract. That included Siemens and Alenia Marconi Systems - a joint venture between the UK's BAE Systems and Italy's Finmeccanica.
The contract is further good news for EADS - home of the Airbus passenger jets - which has recently pulled ahead of US rival Boeing for the first time in its 30-year history.
Last month, the firm revealed it had returned to the black in 2003, unveiling net profits of 152m euros ($188m; £102m) for the year, driven by a late surge in deliveries.
EADS, along with other aerospace companies, had suffered in the wake of the 11 September 2001 US terrorist attacks and was driven into the red in 2002.
The body of the police officer who died on April 4th while trying to arrest part of the commando accused of the attacks of 3/11 was taken out of its tomb and burnt in the cemetery. The police does not know if it's an act of revenge linked to the operation or the action of vandals.
El País - Profanada la tumba y quemado el cadáver del geo muerto en la explosión de Leganés
Profanada la tumba y quemado el cadáver del geo muerto en la explosión de Leganés
Los autores sacaron el féretro del nicho y lo transportaron 700 metros antes de calcinarlo
J. A. HERNÁNDEZ / J. DUVA - Madrid
EL PAÍS | España - 20-04-2004
Unos individuos profanaron en la madrugada de ayer la tumba del miembro de los GEO -el subinspector de policía Francisco Javier Torronteras, de 41 años y padre de dos hijos- que murió en la explosión suicida de Leganés el pasado 3 de abril. Tras abrir el nicho en el que descansaba -el número 80 de la Sección S del cementerio Sur de Madrid-, los delincuentes transportaron 700 metros el ataúd, con el cadáver dentro, hasta una zona más escondida del camposanto y allí, en el suelo, le prendieron fuego, atizado probablemente con gasolina. El cadáver quedó totalmente carbonizado. La policía no descarta ninguna hipótesis sobre los autores de este tétrico acto. "Puede ser una venganza islamista por la muerte de los suicidas de Leganés y también puede ser una fechoría obra de algún grupo de vándalos", sostienen fuentes de las pesquisas. La policía no ha hallado en el lugar de los hechos ninguna nota ni pintadas ni ningún comunicado reivindicando la macabra acción ni el objetivo de la misma, según fuentes de la investigación.
Los primeros indicios apuntan a que los autores entraron al cementerio por una frágil puerta de servicio que ahora está en obras y que suelen usar los empleados del cementerio. Los autores, que iban provistos de un pico sin mango, una pala y una vieja carretilla, rompieron la lápida que tapa el nicho del agente haciendo palanca con un pico y luego sacaron el féretro y lo llevaron en la carretilla hasta un lugar situado a 700 metros de donde estaba el nicho. Allí le prendieron fuego: la virulencia de las llamas induce a pensar que los autores usaron gasolina para avivar las llamas. Ni el pico, que la policía analiza en busca de huellas, ni la pala ni la carretilla de mano proceden de los útiles habituales de los empleados del cementerio.
Dos vigilantes privados del camposanto, que por la noche suelen dar vueltas en un vehículo por los alrededores del recinto mortuorio, avistaron desde el exterior de la tapia una cortina de humo. Entraron y observaron que había un ataúd en el suelo, ardiendo, en medio de una recóndita calle del cementerio formada por hileras de nichos de unos cinco metros de altura y situada en la Sección 15.
El féretro había sido sacado del nicho número 80 de la Sección S, justamente donde fue inhumado, el 4 de abril, el malogrado subinspector de los GEO. Las coronas de flores estaban tiradas en el suelo. Tras abrir la lápida y sacar el ataúd, los delincuentes volvieron a tapar el nicho con la misma lápida, parcialmente resquebrajada por la acción del pico empleado para reventarla. Más tarde, operarios del camposanto colocaron otra lápida, pero ya sin el nombre del agente.
Los vigilantes avisaron a la policía y ésta al juzgado de guardia de la Plaza de Castilla. Juez, fiscal y forense de guardia se desplazaron al cementerio para ver in situ lo ocurrido: los hechos son constitutivos, entre otros, de un delito de inhumación ilegal, según fuentes jurídicas.
Cadáver muy calcinado
Fuentes de la investigación indicaron que el cadáver del miembro del Grupo Especial de Operaciones (GEO), aparte de calcinado presentaba un fuerte golpe con agujero en el pecho. Si bien en un principio se sospechó que el golpe se lo habían producido los profanadores con el pico, el forense comprobó después que la herida era la misma que ocasionó la muerte del subinspector durante la fuerte explosión de Leganés causada por el grupo islamista que perpetró los atentados del 11-M. El forense conocía bien la herida porque, según estos medios, estaba de guardia el mismo que le hizo la autopsia tras el atentado de Leganés. El juez ordenó el traslado del cuerpo, que presentaba un boquete en la cabeza debido al efecto de las llamas, al Instituto Anatómico Forense de Madrid para ser explorado. Agentes de la Brigada de Policía Científica se desplazaron ayer al camposanto para tomar huellas y buscar pistas para aclarar el caso.
"En puridad, no estamos ante una profanación, puesto que no se ha atentado contra ningún símbolo religioso; se ha actuado contra lo que representa el cadáver. En las profanaciones se rompen crucifijos y se abren muchas lápidas; aquí han ido a por una concreta", señala una fuente judicial. La Sección S, donde esta la tumba del geo, es en un lugar muy visible del cementerio, por lo que lo investigadores creen que los autores del acto trasladaron el cadáver a un lugar más escondido para dificultar que alguien les viese. En el lugar donde fueron abrasados féretro y cadáver, ayer aún quedaba, en el suelo, la silueta del ataúd hecha con la tizne del humo y el fuego.
El cementerio, de 82 hectáreas de superficie, tiene 150.000 sepulturas (tumbas, nichos y columbarios). Las puertas están cerradas por la noche, a la vez que cuatro vigilantes -divididos en dos patrullas- custodian el recinto.
El agente fue inhumado el pasado 4 de abril, tras la explosión del piso de Leganés que había servido de cobijo a los principales autores del 11-M. En esa explosión se inmolaron siete presuntos islamistas, y, además del subinspector fallecido, otros 11 geos sufrieron heridas.
This clanging port city on the Rotte River is a study in European immigration. One-third of Rotterdam's population of 600,000 are minimally educated immigrants with little command of the Dutch language. If trends continue, according to a city government study, the non-native community will grow about 58 percent by 2017 - a dramatic demographic shift in a nation where half a century ago there were few foreigners.
I'm looking at immigration for my story, browsing at some different country cases. This one really affected me. It says so much about the collision of new fears about terrorism and buried xenophobic feelings in some European countries. I know personally, some distant relatives in Holland are worried that they will be deported to Afghanistan because the government is now relatively stable. That is the case in the US too. The illegal immigrants caught up in the special registration webs often are sent back to countries when it may not be safe for them. In the case of the Palestinians, there is no state to be sent back to. What strange times we live in ...
Tolerance, Fear Collide in Neatherlands, Los Angeles Times
Tolerance, fear collide in Netherlands
Some Dutch think immigrants threaten traditional way of life
By Jeffrey Fleishman
LOS ANGELES TIMES
ROTTERDAM, The Netherlands - The world lives on West Kruiskade Street: Turkish butchers slip into clean morning aprons, dreadlocks lift in the breeze and steam whirls from Chinese kitchens before vanishing amid scents of African spices and salted fish.
Then comes the night. Storefront shutters slam tight. The falafel boys shelve their pita bread, and girls in head scarves drift toward home in sputtering neon. It is the time of junkies and pickpockets and dark-skinned men with silver in their smiles.
The night worries the Dutch. Long considered one of Europe's most tolerant societies, the Netherlands these days is casting a harsh eye toward immigrants. In a move condemned by human-rights groups, the nation's parliament voted in February to deport 26,000 foreigners requesting political asylum. The decision underscores fears - amplified by the Madrid, Spain, bombings in March - that the nation is failing at integration and that poor, frustrated immigrant communities are threatening Dutch culture.
"The Dutch have become less tolerant," said John Kanton, who came here 40 years ago as a boy from Suriname. "The Madrid bombings have the Dutch thinking, 'Hey, what's going on? What's happening to our way of life?' "
Barry Madlener, a member of Livable Rotterdam, the dominant political party on the city council, isn't ashamed of feeling that way. "We have had this political correctness in Europe," he said. "But now there is anxiety and strange feelings about foreigners coming here who do not want to live in a Western way. ... We want the national government to say we as a country can only handle so many immigrants. We want zero immigrant growth."
This clanging port city on the Rotte River is a study in European immigration. One-third of Rotterdam's population of 600,000 are minimally educated immigrants with little command of the Dutch language. If trends continue, according to a city government study, the non-native community will grow about 58 percent by 2017 - a dramatic demographic shift in a nation where half a century ago there were few foreigners.
As a young man, Kanton boxed on these streets of cawing seagulls and grizzled brick.
His father brought the family to help rebuild a city splintered by World War II. The Kantons now own five boxing-equipment stores - all named Hercules - throughout the Netherlands. Coils of gray in his hair, Kanton, 45, is a well-built middleweight. He speaks Dutch, German and English. He understands Turkish.
One needs such skills to navigate the syntaxes on West Kruiskade, which is as much a street as it is a narrative of changing cultures.
"You have Chinese, Moroccan, Portuguese," he said, walking toward a boxing event poster on his wall. "Look at these fighters. Turkish. Yugoslav. Suriname. Everyone comes to this street. Rents are cheap, and over the years you can watch the different groups come and go."
He glanced out the window. So many sepia-colored faces, many of them adrift between their native land and their new home. Discrimination, said Kanton, is the subtle, polite kind, like a murmur of elevator music in the background of Dutch society.
"When I first came, there were mainly just immigrants from Italy and Spain," he said. "But now you've got them from all kinds of countries, and that makes a difference."
The Netherlands welcomed guest workers in the 1960s and 1970s. And the Dutch, priding themselves on human rights, accepted tens of thousands of refugees and asylum-seekers escaping wars and turmoil in Iraq, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Africa and Afghanistan. Thousands of petitions for asylum have been rejected over the years, but the Dutch government did not have a clear policy on repatriation. The new asylum law - opposed by the nation's churches - will deport 26,000 people over the next three years.
The quandary over the fate of asylum-seekers coincides with rising unemployment and crime in immigrant communities. Criminals with foreign backgrounds make up 55 percent of the country's prison population. The unemployment rate for non-Western immigrants is 14 percent compared to a 4-percent rate among the native Dutch population. Joblessness among Moroccans and Turks, two of the largest minorities, went from a ratio of one unemployed for every 11 workers in 2001 to one in six in 2003.
Many in this country of tulips and marijuana cafes think their liberal values are colliding with other disturbing forces. A number of Muslims have been investigated for alleged links to terrorist organizations since Sept. 11.
"Europeans don't like us anymore," said Said Kallah, 27, a Moroccan shopkeeper on West Kruiskade Street, whose father immigrated to Rotterdam in the 1970s. "They're afraid of us. 'The Muslims did this. The Muslims did that.' They needed us to help rebuild after the world war. Now, they don't.... I never felt Dutch because they never let me feel Dutch."
TRIESTE, Italy – From the battles of ancient Greece to the violent dismemberment of Yugoslavia, Europeans have generally seemed more intent on clubbing each other than on clubbing together. The Romans walloped their neighbors. Catholics and Protestants shared God but couldn't agree on much else. The French and British irritated each other nonstop. And that was before the world wars and genocide of the 20th century.
This article doesn't say many surprising things about identity, but I think it pulls together many themes quite well. For example, did you know the Pope is against European unity?
Nations Struggle to Find Common Threads, Associated Press
By Tom Rachman
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Associated Press
April 18, 2004
Italian businessman Stefano Morgan looks on as he sits in the historic San Marco cafe in Trieste, northern Italy. From the battles of ancient Greece to the violent dismemberment of Yugoslavia, Europeans have generally seemed more intent on clubbing each other than on clubbing together. Now the expanding European Union looks for common threads.
TRIESTE, Italy – From the battles of ancient Greece to the violent dismemberment of Yugoslavia, Europeans have generally seemed more intent on clubbing each other than on clubbing together.
The Romans walloped their neighbors. Catholics and Protestants shared God but couldn't agree on much else. The French and British irritated each other nonstop. And that was before the world wars and genocide of the 20th century.
After centuries of dispute, these notoriously fractious folk have begun to unite under the European Union, with a common currency, a planned constitution, and talk of a joint foreign policy and army.
The various names for this place – from Europe to Europa to Evropa – are the buzzwords of the day. The name, born of Greek mythology on ancient Crete, proclaims itself everywhere, from euro bank notes to the Eurostar train burrowing under the English Channel.
On May 1, the European Union expands from 15 to 25 members, tying ex-Soviet bloc states to Mediterranean islands to Western European powers – 455 million citizens, 20 official languages, age-old resentments and memories of war, not to mention a blinding number of ways to cook dinner.
But do Europeans really have anything in common? Interviews in several European countries indicate that few here feel foremost European, in part because it's so tricky defining what "a European" is.
An EU poll of the 25 countries published in February bears this out. Asked how they will see themselves in the near future, 86 percent said being European would come second to their present nationality or wouldn't figure at all.
Traditionally, people strive for a state; here in Trieste, crossroads of the Slavic east, Germanic center and Latin south, the invented European state must strive for a people – not an easy task in a city as historically muddled as this.
It was the Austro-Hungarian Empire's Mediterranean port in the 18th and 19th centuries; Italy incorporated it in 1918; the Nazis occupied it near the end of World War II; Yugoslavia took brief control after Germany's defeat; the British and Americans bumped them out; and now, it's part of Italy – and by extension the European Union.
Librarian Lisbeth Stiger was born in Austria, works in a German cultural center and speaks fondly of Trieste, her adopted city, where people eat pasta but sip coffee in Viennese-style cafes, a custom harking back to Austro-Hungarian times.
Her setting didn't appear to make her feel much more European.
"Between an Irishman and someone from Malta there's a huge difference, both culturally and in the way of thinking," Stiger said. "I'd never say I feel European. ... Deep down I'm Austrian."
At the University of Trieste, in Piazzale Europa – Europe Square – students hanging out between classes indicated that Europeans do share values, but not a common identity.
A 24-year-old law student, Alex Tardivo, puffed a cigarette and suggested that "tolerance could be our strong point." A 22-year-old engineering student, Omar Tullio, said European culture "is fairly embryonic now."
Certainly, Europe isn't a melting pot, a shared allegiance, a "United States." That was never the intention of the six countries that started the partnership in the 1950s as an economic bloc to lift them out of the wreckage of World War II.
That said, outlines of European identity can be sketched, with admittedly imperfect strokes:
–Europeans share pride in their stunningly creative past, their art and science, whose ancient markers are still evident in centuries-old frescoes dabbed onto the ceilings of village churches and in the stunning architecture of great cities.
"Europe means common tradition regardless of the many historical antagonisms," former Polish Foreign Minister Wladyslaw Bartoszewski said in Warsaw. "It's a Europe of common history, tradition, and civilization, which leads to human rights and finally to democracy."
–Europeans also tend to believe that their governments have an obligation to care for the weak, and they pay high taxes to finance generous health, welfare and pension systems.
"That's different from the American conception where there's much more stress on individual effort," said Heather Grabbe of the Centre for European Reform in London.
–Totalitarianism in the 20th century – Nazism, Communism – has bred a reluctance to engage in military conflicts.
"I suppose compared to the Americans we are all depressives – but then they haven't suffered so many wars and ethnic conflicts on their own soil as we have," 35-year-old Hungarian Cornelia Sarkozi said in Budapest.
–At times, they agree less on what they are than on what they are not – not African, not Asian, and not American.
"As a European, I feel much more open to changes, open to new interests, cultures and countries. I see Americans as much more limited in the way of thinking and seeing things," said Stiger, the librarian.
EU proponents tout their project not only as a way to help nations prosper. The conditions for membership – market economy, democracy, human rights – have brought considerable changes in countries still struggling with the legacy of dictatorships.
With all that, do Europeans need to feel like brothers and sisters?
The EU would be stronger if they did. The idea of "being European" is sometimes mixed up with being in the club itself. The danger is that when EU-building hits a rough patch, people forget the benefits of open borders and tariff-free trade and turn sour on being European.
The euro, the most obvious sign of unity, is a case in point. Some EU citizens complain that the new currency brought huge inflation. Costs have certainly shot up in Italy since the euro was introduced in 2002, with many accusing shopkeepers of greedily rounding up prices in the new currency.
"I don't want Europe. I want Italy. I want a return of the lira and all that," grumbled Trieste furniture salesman Mariano Gianella, lighting cigarettes with a matchbook inappropriately emblazoned with the blue-and-yellow EU flag. "They've doubled the prices and that's it."
One strong proponent of European unity outside the EU is Pope John Paul II. The Polish-born pontiff argues that this continent's Christian history helps define Europeans.
Several countries don't like the sound of that, especially those trying to appear inclusive to growing populations of immigrants, many of them Muslim. The issue is one of many that have deadlocked the proposed constitution.
Awkward as it may be, debate over religion and European values has become unavoidable. France and Germany are struggling over allowing Islamic head scarves in public settings, while Italy was scandalized when a court ordered Christian crosses removed from a school – a ruling later overturned.
Immigration and the expansion of the EU both throw doubt on whether it's possible to define "Europeans" as their numbers and nature shift.
Trieste businessman Cheng Tsu Jung is an immigrant from China and an Italian citizen, firmly rooted on this continent and holding strong opinions about it.
He argued that Europe still has to win over its own people – offer something tangible and sweet to sell the idea of being European.
Cheng looks to his 14-year-old Italian-born son, fluent in this country's language but struggling with Chinese.
"The new generation," he says, "will feel more European than we do."
EDITOR'S NOTE – AP writers Monika Scislowska in Warsaw and Karl Peter Kirk in Budapest contributed to this report.
Several American newspapers have published first page articles on Spain's Prime Minister decision to order soldiers home from Iraq. The New York Times, for instance, explains that Rodriguez Zapatero decided to do so within 24 hours after he assumed his new post "" to avoid being drawn into a debate or to avoid complications in the field."
The El País story is a welcome complement. It explains that the new Minister of the Interior is making international terrorism his first priority. It will imply more resources, a reorganization of agencies and a more intense international cooperation.
El País - El Gobierno prepara un plan especial de lucha contra el terrorismo internacional
El Gobierno prepara un plan especial de lucha contra el terrorismo internacional
Interior encarga un informe para ampliar los efectivos de policía y Guardia Civil
J. M. ROMERO / J. A. RODRÍGUEZ - Madrid
EL PAÍS | España - 19-04-2004
Los atentados del 11-M han cambiado de la noche a la mañana las prioridades del Ministerio del Interior. El terrorismo internacional se ha convertido en una de las prioridades del nuevo Gobierno y en primera preocupación del nuevo titular de la cartera, José Antonio Alonso, que esta misma semana va a solicitar un informe a los mandos de la Guardia Civil y el Cuerpo Nacional de Policía sobre cómo debe organizarse la lucha contra el terrorismo islamista radical, sin descuidar el combate contra ETA y tratando de eliminar los roces y la competencia entre servicios de información. En la práctica, una reestructuración. Ambos cuerpos apenas suman un millar de agentes destinados específicamente a tareas de información, prevención y contraterrorismo, de los que sólo un centenar se dedican a investigar las tramas de fanáticos islamistas, con muy pocos traductores y prácticamente ningún funcionario que hable árabe.
El ataque contra los trenes del pasado 11 de marzo en Madrid ha cambiado radicalmente la perspectiva española sobre el terrorismo. España ha dejado de ser la retaguardia islamista, un territorio de apoyo logístico y de retirada, para convertirse en una pieza más del tablero del terrorismo internacional.
ETA ha centrado el trabajo de los servicios de información durante los últimos 30 años, en los que la banda ha asesinado a casi 900 personas. Pero justo ahora, cuando ETA está más débil que nunca -según admiten todos los expertos antiterroristas- el terrorismo islamista ha llevado hasta el infinito su capacidad de amenaza sobre España.
Las fuerzas que ahora se pondrán a las órdenes de Alonso (Guardia Civil y Cuerpo Nacional de Policía) suman en conjunto unas 120.000 personas, repartidas asimétricamente por el territorio. De ellas, apenas 1.000 están encuadradas en los servicios centrales de información, volcados en la lucha antiterrorista. Hay también agentes destinados a este cometido en las jefaturas superiores de policía y en las comandancias de zona de la Guardia Civil.
La Comisaría General de Información de la policía dispone de unos 500 agentes, incluyendo auxiliares, de los que sólo medio centenar se dedican al extremismo islamista. Las proporciones son casi idénticas en la Guardia Civil y en el Centro Nacional de Inteligencia (CNI), organismo que además cuenta con una gran red de enlaces y coordinadores internacionales.
Es decir, que de los servicios de información disponibles sólo un 10% trabajan en exclusiva sobre el terrorismo internacional. Apenas hay traductores y casi ninguno habla árabe. De hecho, en todas las comisarías hay hoy día carteles solicitando agentes que hablen o tengan conocimientos de árabe.
Más recursos
El nuevo Gobierno socialista pretende de manera prioritaria incrementar las fuerzas disponibles para combatir la amenaza del terrorismo internacional. Para ello, Alonso va a encargar esta misma semana informes a los mandos de cada cuerpo para que le den cuenta de las necesidades.
Las fuentes antiterroristas consultadas saludan esta iniciativa, pero recuerdan unas recientes declaraciones de George Tenet, máximo responsable de la CIA, en relación a los atentados del 11 de septiembre en Nueva York: "En cinco años, si seguimos invirtiendo, podremos ponernos al nivel de Al Qaeda".
Los expertos coinciden en que el terrorismo internacional requiere más medios policiales, un cambio de mentalidad en el trabajo policial -que debe extenderse a la judicatura- y, sobre todo, coordinación interna e internacional. Los mandos apuestan por la creación de una superunidad central antiterrorista que aglutine toda la información, y que debe contar necesariamente, para estar completa, alegan, con la presencia del Centro Nacional de Inteligencia.
Tanto Guardia Civil como policía indican que, para empezar a hablar, cada uno de ellos debería contar con 150 funcionarios dedicados al terrorismo internacional. El trabajo debería ser coordinado por una estructura superior, con capacidad operativa, a fin de que las distintas unidades "no se crucen en el campo de batalla" como ha ocurrido en ocasiones en la lucha contra ETA. El incremento de medios debería hacerse extensivo al CNI, que quedaría incluido en la unidad de coordinación. Y la coordinación debería ser efectiva, sin competencia entre servicios, con unidad de acción y sin tensiones.
La queja fundamental de los servicios antiterroristas es que en los últimos años no se hizo caso a los síntomas, a los avisos de que la amenaza contra España crecía. No se tomaron medidas cuando Osama Bin Laden, en noviembre pasado, amenazó directamente a España; varios trabajos policiales contra células durmientes fueron tirados por el suelo o vapuleados, como el del que se llamó comando Dixan (una célula idéntica ha sido encarcelada en Francia tras ser localizada con el mismo detergente) y apenas contaron, aseguran, con apoyo judicial.
Bases de datos unificadas
El mando unificado de policía y Guardia Civil que el nuevo ministro pondrá en marcha, tendrá en los próximos meses una estructura estable. Entre las prioridades figura la unificación de las bases de datos de la policía y la Guardia Civil, que puede ser clave en operaciones de prevención o de intervención contra el terrorismo.
Otro de los proyectos del Ministerio del Interior es la creación progresiva de unidades especiales conjuntas de investigación compuestas por agentes de la policía y de la guardia civil, una de cuyas misiones será también la lucha antiterrorista.
Is Spain like a ship passing France and Germany in the night? As Zapatero follows through on his pledge to remove Spanish troops from Iraq, and others (okay, Honduras) pledge to do the same, Germany and France are heading toward rapproachement, according to this piece.
This story, although a little over a week old, focuses on Franco-German efforts to narrow the rift of trans-Atlantic relations.
Here we've talked about the push for more autonomy, for a greater presence in global security but as this writer points out, the rest of Europe is not ready for the "French-German drive for European pre-eminence."
Consider this Védrine comment on France and other countries intervening "if the Iraqis ask for it."
If there were a new French role in relation to Iraq, he said, it would not "simply be to help the Americans, but the Iraqis."
Iraq needs help, and that means the U.S. needs help, but when are the Iraqis going to ask for it?
Some French newspapers already see the need to step in, Vinokur points out:
Le Figaro, in an editorial, said that since the United States was not going to clear out of Iraq, "France would be well advised to abstain from diplomatically harassing its ally on the question of the handover of power, and to stop continuously referring everything to the United Nations."
http://www.iht.com/articles/514175.html
International Herald Tribune - News Analysis: Germany and France staying mum
News Analysis: Germany and France staying mum
John Vinocur/IHT IHT
Saturday, April 10, 2004
PARIS France and Germany have been strikingly discreet about America's new troubles in Iraq, reflecting what appears to be their judgment that the country's instability threatens any positive development in the Middle East over the long term.
"No one has any interest in an American fiasco," the former French foreign minister, Hubert Védrine, said Friday. That did not take in the schadenfreude of some French and German commentary, but it had the sound of an operative formula to describe a situation in which Washington's misery did not objectively equal Paris' or Berlin's gain.
In attempting to draw closer to the United States over the past months - the Germans actively, with American backing; the French in a less public mode - the two countries set courses for improving trans-Atlantic relations that would be destroyed by Iraq-related ironies or we-told-you-so's from ranking officials.
Besides, the French and Germans shared an absence of alternatives and an element of direct self-interest. With time, France and Germany's attempt to turn Europe against the United States in the run-up to the war has come to be regarded by strategists in both countries' capitals as a tactical mistake that resulted instead in a majority of the 25 European Union countries opposing the French-German drive for European pre-eminence.
In a Europe greatly weakened by its fractures over the war, and frightened now by terrorism on its soil, the error of trying to turn the Americans into the ultimate villains in Iraq while they are still the ultimate guarantors of European security was clearly not one the French and Germans would repeat.
In Germany, where a poll on Thursday found that 53 percent wanted the Americans to pull out of Iraq, the government had a rather different stance. Weeks ago, Defense Minister Peter Struck, in suggesting that a Spanish troop withdrawal would be unwise, said an American pullback would mean total instability.
Since January, while refusing to supply troops for Iraq, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's government has given its approval to the grand lines of a Bush administration initiative for the Greater Middle East, signed a German-American Alliance for the 21st Century that stresses common goals in the region, and, through Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, defined "Jihadist terrorism" as "the new totalitarianism" that constitutes the greatest threat to global security.
In France, in a context of newspaper headlines swimming with quagmire-chaos-Vietnam references, there was palpable official caution, with President Jacques Chirac's office describing the French leader as being "very concerned" about the insurgency's intensification.
Védrine, who began France's systematic attacks on American "unilateralism" and "hyperpower" status while serving as Chirac's foreign minister, did not resist saying in a radio interview that the United States was paying for its errors, including what he called "ideological blindness."
At the same time, he also stated that he believed France and other countries could intervene "if the Iraqis ask for it." Indeed, a rapprochement between France and the United States was "underway," Védrine asserted.
If there were a new French role in relation to Iraq, he said, it would not "simply be to help the Americans, but the Iraqis."
In general, the French have suggested that a change in their posture could come through the vehicle of the United Nations and after a U.S. turnover of power to an Iraqi administration on June 30.
But Chirac's opportunities to maneuver were limited.
He is hemmed in by the reality that his surge in popularity at home during the 2003 Iraq debate has dissipated into his current grief-filled domestic political situation.
At the same time, he faces a series of encounters with President George W. Bush and other leaders at four major international meetings through the month of June - with sentiment in favor of righting the situation in Iraq unmistakably outweighing interest in doling out blame.
In a sense, Germany and France's options were also limited by the reality that it was no longer possible to justify countering American policy by the selective demonization of the Bush Administration.
Just as John Kerry had called on the new Socialist prime minister of Spain, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, to reconsider his pledge to bring Spanish forces home from Iraq, the Democratic candidate's reaction on Thursday to the worsening military situation hardly let Europe off the hook from its faulty presumption that no unified American view existed on Europe's ongoing share of Iraqi responsibilities.
"No European country," said Kerry, "is made safe by a failed Iraq, yet those countries are distinctly absent from the risk bearing."
Perhaps remarkably, some French commentators appeared to be taking the idea to heart that assisting the Americans, however passively, in Iraq is the best alternative to chaos in the Middle East.
Le Figaro, in an editorial, said that since the United States was not going to clear out of Iraq, "France would be well advised to abstain from diplomatically harassing its ally on the question of the handover of power, and to stop continuously referring everything to the United Nations."
Another newspaper, Le Journal du Dimanche, an exceptionally persistent critic of the United States, even wrote last week that Iraqis "would not understand if France uses Iraq to pursue its disagreements with the United States." Before the latest fighting, Le Monde's correspondent in Baghdad had gone further still in presenting a revisionist account of where France's excellent view of its own record stops in explaining how Iraq had gotten to where it was.
Without directly touching on it, the report presaged French discretion on America's grief of the moment.
It said: "Iraqis remain exceedingly critical of French policy. Contrary to what Europeans often think, the fact of having opposed the American occupation does absolutely nothing to boost the popularity of Europe or of a given country in Iraq."
"French policy over the past year is severely criticized," the correspondent continued. "It's impossible to find anyone, apart from a few out-of-work Baathist officials, who support the French position over the Iraq crisis."
International Herald Tribune
Here are a few different newspapers spinning the same story: the Arabic European League (AEL)--lots of membership in Belgium and Netherlands--has "warned" traders in Antwerp that they could be the next target of a terrorist attacks.
The majority of traders in Antwerp are Jewish with strong ties to Israel.
Newspaper accounts differ from calling it "Islamic fundamentalist threat" to "Hamas" to a general "terrorism threat"
This was an aspect I didn't expect to cover in Antwerp initially, but from my reporting there, tensions at the business person-to-person level between Muslims and Jews was very little. But so is the interaction. The majority of traders are Hindu, not Muslim. Though these supposed threats are not from the immediate community.
For the most part, people felt (obviously i'm not there now) very safe and had little to say about March 11. September 11, was tragic, they said, but far away.
This is a blurb from a diamond industry trade magazine published by the International Diamond Exchange.
Antwerp's diamond traders fear terror attacks
http://www.expatica.com/source/site_article.asp?subchannel_id=24&story_id=6478
This is the belgium expats mag's take
Antwerp Security Tightened Following Threats
http://www.idexonline.com/start.asp
Reuters
Belgium Investigates Email Threats Against Jews
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=4794541
Israeli news
Belgian Jews Threatened By Euro-Arab League
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news.php3?id=60711
Antwerp Security Tightened Following Threats
(April 8, '04, 10:56 Edahn Golan)
Antwerp police has beefed up security after the Arab European League (AEL) said it could become a target of a Hamas terrorist attack if the local Jewish community did not denounce Israel and its policies.
Ahmed Azzuz, the AEL's local leader, was quoted in an interview saying Hamas planned to attack foreign targets following the assassination of Sheik Ahmed Yassin adding that Antwerp was an “obvious target”.
“The diamond sector openly supports the Zionist regime,” Azzuz said in the interview, adding, “Every year 200 Belgian-Israeli reservists leave for Israel to kill innocent civilians”.
The Diamond High Council (HRD) has filed a complaint against the AEL, accusing the group of “intimidation” and “threatening behavior”.
“It is the first time the diamond sector has been named as a target in such an explicit manner,” HRD Managing Director Peter Meeus told Reuters.
Antwerp's diamond traders fear terror attacks
BRUSSELS - Businesses in Antwerp's famous diamond traders' district fear they could soon be targeted by an Islamic fundamentalist terror attack, the Belgian press reported on Thursday.
The majority of Antwerp's diamond traders are Jewish. They say have been particularly concerned since the Arab European League (AEL) warned they could be considered a terrorist target.
"Ever since the AEL made its statements, we have obviously been asking ourselves questions," diamond industry spokesman Peter Meeus told La Libre Belgique.
"The quarter was already targeted in 1981, when terrorists attacked a Portuguese synagogue," he added.
Meeus wants the Belgian government to step up even further the already tight security measures in place in the diamond sellers quarter, which is near to Antwerp's main station.
The AEL insisted that it was not trying to threaten Antwerp's diamond traders but warn them.
"We want to warn Antwerp's Jewish community in its entirety to be on its guard. The community's support for Israel is no secret," Ahmed Azzuz, head of the AEL in Belgium told La Libre Belgique.
"It could therefore be targeted because of its support for Zionism, in the same way that innocent people in Spain paid for their leaders' pro-American policies during the war in Iraq.
"We are not anti-Semitic. It is recent events that have led us to sound the alarm bell," he added.
Belgium Investigates Email Threats Against Jews
ANTWERP, Belgium (Reuters) - Belgium is investigating a series of e-mail threats against the local Jewish community to avenge Israeli attacks against the Palestinian militant group Hamas, a spokeswoman said on Friday.
Investigators were looking into the e-mails sent to the prime minister's office and several newspapers that threatened attacks on Jews in the northern port city of Antwerp.
"We have opened a file and we are checking it out," Lieve Pellens, spokeswoman for the federal prosecutor's office, said.
"We don't really give it that much importance," she said, adding the office received such reports regularly.
The daily Gazet Van Antwerpen reported that e-mails sent on April 1 threatened to attack the Jewish community, as well as buses, trams, and shops.
The messages contained the name of Abdelkarim el Mejjati, suspected of being one of the masterminds behind the Madrid train bombings that killed 191 people, it said.
Mejjati is also suspected of being the operational leader of the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group, which investigators blame for last year's bombings in Casablanca.
Gazet Van Antwerpen said the e-mails carried the mobile phone number of a group of Cameroon students. The newspaper contacted the students who denied any knowledge of the threats.
Antwerp is the world's largest diamond distribution center and many members of the port city's orthodox Jewish community of about 20,000 work in the business.
Earlier this week, the diamond sector called for extra security after a local Arab militant group said the industry could be attacked by Islamic militants if the Jewish community did not denounce Israeli policies against Palestinians.
Antwerp police say they have increased protection.
Israel killed the wheelchair-bound Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in a helicopter strike on March 22, accusing him of being behind suicide bombings in the Jewish state.
Since the start of the latest Palestinian uprising in 2000, Belgian Jews have complained of a rise in anti-Semitic violence and virulent anti-Israeli propaganda.
Belgian Jews Threatened By Euro-Arab League 15:13 Apr 09, '04 / 18 Nisan 5764
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news.php3?id=60711
Belgium's Jews, in particular Antwerp's Jewish diamond merchants, have been put on notice by the Arab European League (AEL).
"We want to warn Antwerp's Jewish community in its entirety to be on its guard. The community's support for Israel is no secret," Ahmed Azzuz, head of the AEL in Belgium told the Belgian newspaper La Libre Belgique.
"The AEL calls on the Jewish community in Antwerp to cease its support of, and distance itself from, the state of Israel. If not, attacks in Antwerp are almost unpreventable," Azzuz had earlier told the Belgian Flemish magazine Knack, adding, "Every year, 200 Belgian-Israeli reservists leave for Israel to kill innocent civilians."
According to an Israel Channel 1 television report, the Jewish community is taking the threats seriously, and has already contacted elected Jewish officials, the local police and the nation's justice minister. A member of the Belgian diamond merchant's community interviewed on the program confirmed reports that members of the Jewish community are afraid and at present, refrain from being outdoors during the nighttime hours.
Peter Meeus reminded La Libre Belgique, "The quarter was already targeted in 1981, when terrorists attacked a Portuguese synagogue."
The AEL's Azzuz insisted in the media that his statements were not threats.
A spokeswoman for Antwerp police said rigorous security measures had already been introduced.
O.k., so it's off topic, but considering our travels and our group's encounters with proposals for dates and even marriage, the article seems worth a smile for the play on stereotypes.
It's a small vignette in the New Yorker on a group of NY-based French bachelor businessmen who've started cocktail parties ("French Tuesdays"). The group of French expatriates has grown so big that Playboy magazine sponsored the last one where Rachel Hunter was the guest of honor.
It makes interesting observations about what the group considers a way to socialize in "the French way." The comments of the French men's views of American women and men are the best. ("American girls are very liberated, but the American men are uptight." "We French, we think the Americans are too gentlemen, they are afraid of the girls. So we make sure the girls don't get ignored.")
Some of this rang true in our travels, I think.
It's online!
PEPE LE PEW DEPT.
BRUSH-OFF
By Leslie Schillinger
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/?040412ta_talk_schillinger
or April 12, 2004 New Yorker (Eggs on the cover). It's page 30.
A year ago, when the French President, Jacques Chirac, declared that France would veto a United Nations resolution in favor of war against Iraq, “whatever the circumstances,” he probably did not consider the potential collateral damage it might do to French bachelors overseas.
But this circumstance was of grave concern to many Manhattan-based French businessmen. And so, on March 18, 2003—the day before the United States started bombing Iraq—Pierre Battu, a textile importer with the compact proportions and purposeful intensity of a Jack Russell terrier, decided to act in self-defense. He threw a cocktail party for French expatriates and the Americans who liked them. Fifty people turned up, mostly men; the evening was such a success that he held another the next month. Battu named the party “French Tuesdays,” and at the second one a lanky young banker named Georges Benoliel, fresh out of business school in Paris, showed up with a dozen young women. After a brief discussion of their mutual aims (more women), Battu invited Benoliel into the French Tuesdays junta, which included Battu and his partner in the textile business, Gilles Amsallem, who runs around snapping photographs.
Battu put up a web site so that he could post the party photos and explain his raison d’être. It reads, “You have a particular taste for red wine, cheese, smokers, you like bubbles, play pétanque, enjoy taking a few days off in Paris or Saint-Tropez, qualify yourself as a Francophile / Francophone, speak French or just enjoy to socialize the French way. . . . You have already qualified to join our happy, trendy, hip ‘French Tuesdays’ parties.”
By this winter, the party had evolved from a small monthly cocktail hour to a biweekly all-night extravaganza that moves among various large night clubs. When the group celebrated its first anniversary last month, at a place called Marquee, a party given by Playboy for its April cover model, Rachel Hunter, was bumped to an upstairs lounge in order to make room for the Frenchmen. Lucas Labat, a party regular, spent most of the evening surrounded by American women. He had theories. “American girls are very liberated, but the American men are uptight,” he said. “They want to be perfect, they get the chest wax, they wear nice clothes. We French, we think the Americans are too gentlemen, they are afraid of the girls. So we make sure the girls don’t get ignored.”
Battu elaborated. “We French have the image of being arrogant and loving women and wine and cheese and all that,” he said. “And, you know, it’s true, we are that way!”
Benoliel poured out jeroboam after jeroboam of champagne. “When American girls go to a party, they’re hoping to meet a man,” he said. “But the men keep to themselves and drink beer, and ignore the women. It is a terrible waste.”
Although the party was going strong, something was troubling Battu and his friends. Up in the lounge, Hunter and some model friends languished, their charms squandered on American men who, presumably, were drinking beer and ignoring them. Playboy guests wore special plastic bracelets that gave them access to the party. “Those girls were separated from us,” Battu said. “For us, the Playboy playmate—it’s an American icon! We couldn’t believe it when we heard Playboy would share this party with us. We thought we would meet our dream in reality! But no. They would not let us in, because of our heavy French accent.”
“I could not go there. I had no bracelet,” Benoliel said sadly. “The man at the rope wouldn’t let us pass.” He paused. “Except for Charles-Henry. Yes, Charles-Henry. He slipped in. Many times.”
Charles-Henry Kurzen, a twenty-five-year-old banker from Paris, happened to know a close personal friend of Hunter’s, and he was able to get past security. “I was determined to go upstairs, because Rachel Hunter was there,” Kurzen said. “She is a woman born in 1969—she is thirty-four!—but she is a beautiful, mature woman; a woman of character, a woman of history, a woman who has lived!” Kurzen tried to persuade Hunter to join his countrymen downstairs, but she declined. “Maybe because her party was a business gathering and she could not leave,” he speculated. “Maybe because she found me too young; maybe because she did not like the idea of a French party.” He thought a little longer. “Or maybe it was a question of chic. I do not know.”
— Liesl Schillinger
In France, the President's party has decided to publicly oppose Turkey's candidacy to the EU. The official position, which is that of the Union, is a "technical" one: if Turkey complies with the crtieria applied to all the others by the end of 2004, negotiations will start.
The French right is now saying that Europe needs to fix its "limits" and that accepting Turkey would "change its nature." Valery Giscard d'Estain, an ex-president who recently headed the process for drafting a constitution has the same position. It is a point of agreement with the extreme right and they want to make it an issue during the coming European election. It goes along the lines of those who in several European countires (Germany and Denmark, among others) insist on the "Christian" nature of Europe.
Some people on the left (Balibar among them) think that the richness of Europe comes from its inherent and historical diversity, but opposing Turkey's entry plays with powerful racist feelings that can be found accross the political spectrum. The issue is essential for the evolution of the EU, for the definition of Europe's identity, and for its relations with the Muslim world.
La droite française remet en question un engagement historique de l'Europe vis-à-vis de la Turquie
LE MONDE | 09.04.04 | 14h34
L'UMP entre en opposition avec le président de la République sur la candidature d'Ankara à l'Union. La "vocation européenne" de la Turquie avait été reconnue par de Gaulle en 1963
Le ministre des affaires étrangères français, Michel Barnier, a dû faire une mise au point, jeudi 8 avril, à propos des relations de la Turquie avec l'Union européenne : "La ligne de la France reste la même", a-t-il dit, après qu'Alain Juppé eut pris, la veille, le contre-pied de la politique officielle française en contestant, au nom de l'UMP, la vocation européenne de ce pays. A l'Elysée, on appuyait, jeudi, les déclarations de M. Barnier, en confirmant que la position de la France n'avait pas changé, et restait "celle que le président n'a cessé de répéter ces dernières années".
Le parti de la majorité est donc entré en opposition avec le président de la République et le gouvernement, sur une question qui promet de devenir l'un des sujets sensibles du débat préélectoral. Même si l'on fait valoir, à l'Elysée, que "chacun est dans son rôle" et qu'il ne s'agit là que du "jeu démocratique" normal, il est peu probable que les électeurs s'y retrouvent.
On sentait à vrai dire depuis quelque temps que la question turque posait quelques problèmes à la droite française. La perspective d'une adhésion, même lointaine, de la Turquie à l'ensemble européen est en effet contestée dans son principe sur deux fronts : par les droites extrémistes et souverainistes, décidées à en faire un de leurs thèmes de mobilisation pour les élections européennes, mais aussi par des milieux proeuropéens, notamment à l'UDF. Des hommes comme Valéry Giscard d'Estaing ou Jean-Louis Bourlanges se sont affichés comme farouchement opposés à l'entrée de la Turquie dans l'Union.
En estimant, mercredi, qu'il faut fixer des limites à l'Union sous peine de la "dénaturer" et que la Turquie ne doit pas être dedans, Alain Juppé reprend les arguments de ces derniers. Il a reconnu qu'il avait "évolué" sur le sujet, et c'est peu dire.
M. Juppé, lorsqu'il était minis- tre des affaires étrangères, avait en effet activement défendu une vision stratégique des relations avec la Turquie : sa démocratisation, le rapprochement de ce grand pays musulman avec l'Europe pouvaient avoir un effet stabilisateur dans la région, et l'Europe avait tout à y gagner. Alain Juppé a été l'artisan de l'accord d'union douanière de 1995, qui faisait de la Turquie le pays non membre le plus étroitement associé à l'Europe. Il eut à le défendre contre la Grèce, contre une partie des députés européens, contre les socialistes français qui s'enflammaient soudain de compassion pour les Kurdes maltraités.
Ce n'était certes qu'un accord d'union douanière. Mais dès lors, et depuis l'arrivée de Jacques Chirac à l'Elysée, la France est considérée par les Turcs tournés vers l'Europe comme leur meilleur soutien dans l'Union. Cette idylle n'a connu que quelques incidents de parcours sans lendemain, quand les parlementaires français s'emparaient de la question du génocide arménien.
A de multiples reprises ces dernières années, Jacques Chirac a rappelé sa position invariable, la dernière fois avec peut-être un peu plus de prudence, lors du Conseil européen du 26 mars : "Les efforts de la Turquie en vue d'intégrer toutes les règles de la démocratie et de l'économie de marché sont indiscutables, a dit le président. C'est le rapport de la Commission -attendu pour octobre- qui nous permettra de décider s'il y a lieu ou non d'engager des négociations, qui seront longues, pour son adhésion."
La question qui est posée est donc de savoir si les changements introduits par la Turquie dans sa législation sont suffisants pour satisfaire aux normes européennes, et s'ils sont effectivement mis en œuvre dans la pratique. Pour les autorités françaises, c'est une question "technique". Aucune question de principe ne se pose en revanche sur la "vocation européenne" de la Turquie, sur sa légitimité à intégrer à terme, même si c'est dans longtemps, l'ensemble européen.
C'est sur ce point qu'Alain Juppé a rompu, mercredi, avec la position officielle.
Le débat sur la Turquie n'est pas propre à la France. Le chancelier Kohl avait en son temps mis les pieds dans le plat en faisant référence à l'héritage chrétien de l'Europe ; l'Union chrétienne-démocrate (CDU) lui emboîte le pas aujourd'hui, de même que d'autres démocrates-chrétiens et diverses extrêmes droites européennes, notamment au Danemark. Mais la position officielle de la France ne lui est pas propre non plus : c'est la position officielle de l'Union.
Ce qui fait la particularité de la Turquie dans le débat sur "les limites de l'Europe" c'est, plus que sa petite partie de territoire située en Europe continentale, l'engagement historique qu'avaient pris envers elle de Gaulle et Adenauer en 1963, impulsant un accord d'association qui proclamait la "vocation européenne" de ce pays. Pendant de longues années, l'évolution politique tourmentée de la Turquie a épargné aux Européens d'avoir à se préoccuper de cette promesse ; la Turquie n'était pas même reconnue comme pays candidat.
C'est en 1999, au sommet d'Helsinki qui trace les grandes lignes de l'élargissement jusqu'en 2005, qu'Ankara se voit reconnaître le statut de candidat. Le texte d'Helsinki est sans ambiguïté sur le fond : "La Turquie, dit ce texte, est un pays candidat, qui a vocation à rejoindre l'Union" quand il aura rempli les critères de conformité définis en 1993 à Copenhague. En 2002, lors d'un autre sommet à Copenhague, les Quinze font un grand pas de plus vers Ankara. Si la Turquie répond aux critères fin 2004 (ce sera l'objet du rapport de la Commission en octobre), "l'Union ouvrira avec elle des négociations d'adhésion", déclare le sommet dans ses conclusions.
Claire Tréan
• ARTICLE PARU DANS L'EDITION DU 10.04.04
Rujun was right to pick-up a story on the 100th anniversary of "entente cordiale" (see below). It shows the strange, and contradictory feelings that exist between the "biftecks" as the French at times call the Brits, and the Frogs. In a sense, it could be a useful metaphor of the contradictory and strange feelings that most Europeans experiment about each other.
I just wanted to add this one from The New York Times. Their Paris correspondent, Alan Riding, knows a lot, and has a great sense of humor. He suggests that the French like the Queen because of her German blood. I wonder if I like what he writes, because (not only) he is a British citizen.
Since 1066, It Hasn't Always Been Cordial
By ALAN RIDING
PARIS, April 5 — If the history of British-French relations had begun with the signing of the Entente Cordiale on April 8, 1904, the record would not look too bad.
The agreement led to an easing of the colonial rivalry, alliances against Germany in two world wars and eventual collaboration, tinged with competition, within the European Union.
The problem is that most of the British and French public know "entente cordiale" only as a phrase — and they do not really believe it.
So Queen Elizabeth's state visit to France this week to mark the accord's 100th anniversary is as much an occasion to remember what divides the neighbors as what unites them. And here history began long before 1904.
Since 1066 for the British and the Hundred Years War for the French, the governments and the peoples have viewed one another with a mixture of envy and hostility. And even today, their cordiality often seems to be more out of necessity than conviction.
Yet, relations have also changed fundamentally, not as a result of the Entente Cordiale, but because the D-Day landings 60 years ago persuaded the French that the United States was now the undisputed leader of the English-speaking — "Anglo-Saxon" to the French — world. And if any doubt existed, that status was confirmed when London bowed to American pressure to end the Suez adventure in 1956.
As a result, since then, a basic asymmetry has shaped cross-channel relations: when France looks west, it now sees the United States, not Britain, as its competitor; but when Britain looks east, it still sees France controlling, at times blocking, its relationship with Europe. So, while the French are obsessed with the United States and somewhat indifferent to Britain, the British remain passionate about their love-hate for France.
Relations today between President Jacques Chirac of France and Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain tell part of the story. They crossed swords over Iraq, with a surprising number of Britons sharing Mr. Chirac's opposition to the war and criticizing Mr. Blair's pro-American stance. Yet, almost as irritating to government relations is Mr. Chirac's clear preference for a strategic European alliance with Germany rather than with Britain.
The idea that the French cannot be trusted politically is therefore daily fodder for the conservative British press, with the tabloids never missing an occasion to remind readers of "frog ingratitude" at being "saved" by Britain and the United States in World War II. In contrast, French newspapers, rather than becoming exercised about British political behavior, simply take for granted that London is subservient to Washington.
The channel tunnel tells a different story. Britain reluctantly accepted ending its insularity, but today 57 percent of Eurostar passengers are Britons, while only 26 percent are French. Put differently, the British love France — its cities, its villages, its countryside, its art de vivre.
They vacation here in vast numbers and buy second homes, often ruins that they lovingly rebuild.
But for the French, while Britain offers lower taxes and the powerful pulse of London's financial center, it draws relatively few of them as a tourist destination.
Once again, then, it is the British responding to the French, rather than the other way around. And their ambivalence is never far away. Nothing gives Britons more pleasure than beating France in rugby or soccer, yet French players are the top stars of Arsenal, Chelsea and other British soccer teams. Nothing delights Britons more than to head for their Provençal home and stock up on wine, yet few bother to learn French (and feel vindicated since more and more French speak English).
Still, Queen Elizabeth's visit has given British and French newspapers a chance to gauge how the distant neighbors view each other. And the results are not surprising. The left-of-center Paris daily Libération, which published a joint supplement Monday with the London daily The Guardian, ran a front-page photograph of a large green frog under the headline, "I love you, moi non plus." "I love you, neither do I."
More telling, perhaps, were the results of a BVA-ICM poll carried out for the two newspapers. Asked what they most admired, 80 percent of Britons in the poll chose French art and culture, while 69 percent of the French cited English music, presumably pop. Predictably, 64 percent of Britons also liked French cuisine, while only 6 percent of the French approved of English food. And surprisingly, 51 percent of Britons had a good image of Mr. Chirac, while Mr. Blair was liked by 49 percent of the French.
The poll also addresses personal attitudes. Asked to pick some typical characteristics, 76 percent of the French considered Britons "faithful to their principles," while 69 percent of Britons thought the French "imaginative." On other traits, like "seductive," "arrogant" and "cowardly," Britons gave higher scores to the French than the French did to Britons.
How Britain and France are seen to fit into Europe today, however, perhaps says most about the legacy of the Entente Cordiale.
While 85 percent of the French and 73 percent of Britons trust the Spaniards and 84 percent of the French and 69 percent of Britons trust the Germans, only 51 percent of Britons trust the French and 55 percent of the French trust the British. Another poll published last week by Pèlerin magazine said the French feel closest to Germany, with Britain ranking fifth on the list.
And yet the French have always loved Queen Elizabeth and the British royal family. Could it be because they have German blood?
I read this story on the Guardian originally as the starting point of broader research on EU issues. But I really like this story and decide to post it here even though it's from the mainstream Guardian, as it captures a lot of details of the sentiment among ordinary French people and Britons. A lot of things it said is true based on what I saw in France, but there are surprising moments such as the last paragraph.
It's interesting to see how these two countries, who are deeply embedded with each other, yet diverge on many important issues including the war in Iraq and Euro, interact with each other, especially under the situation that France clearly stresses on the Franco-German relationship.
The story is titled Twenty-one Miles Away, and a World Apart, on the Guardian.
Twenty-one miles away, and a world apart
On April 8 1904, Britain and France signed a historic agreement heralding an end to centuries of bloody feuding. But the age-old mix of distrust, affection, and antipathy between the French and the British was never going to be overcome so easily. In a unique collaboration with the French daily paper Libération, G2 today celebrates the original special relationship. Here, Emma Brockes takes a trip to explore the meaning of the narrow strip of water that separates us
Monday April 5, 2004
The Guardian
"There has never been an antipathy between them, only the desire to surpass. France is the adversary of England as the better is the enemy of the good." - Victor Hugo
On the quayside at Dover, the good and the better compete this morning in the form of two cross-channel ferries: P&O's Pride of Canterbury and, docked beside it, the French SeaFrance vessel, Rodin. (Ships in the SeaFrance fleet are named after the Impressionists - Cézanne, Manet, Renoir. Ships in the P&O fleet are named after places - Dover, Kent, Calais. This may or may not reflect the two nations' respective preferences for figurative and literal thinking.)
English schoolkids spit from the passenger deck on to the car deck 20ft below and yell, "Bye England! Bye England!" and "We're gonna si-ink!" while behind the docks the white cliffs confirm that "we" end here and "they" begin there, somewhere out in the mist, where Vodafone UK becomes France Bouygtel and the Channel becomes La Manche. It is what cultural theorist Homi K Bhabha might call an "in-between space through which the meanings of cultural and political authority are negotiated", and what Paul, a 51-year-old teaching assistant from Folkestone, calls "what keeps them out". Paul is standing beside me on deck. "I wouldn't take SeaFrance," he advises. "They're French. I went on one 10 years ago and had to queue half an hour for a drink." A well aimed pellet of spit sets off a car alarm and 11-year-old Rosie from Brentwood, Essex, explains how she feels about the French. "When they speak, they sound angry." She has yet to connect this with the spitting prowess of her classmates or the long and complicated history of Anglo-French relations.
The role of the English Channel in British life could for a long time be summarised by the Times headline "Fog over Channel, continent cut off." Thirty-thousand square miles, 21 miles across at its narrowest, 100 at its widest and stretching from Finisterre to the strait of Dover, the Channel has served as a measure of human courage and insecurity since it first split the continent. "Did the fact that the Channel was there make Britain what it is?" asks Peter Unwin, former English diplomat and author of the Narrow Sea, a history of the English Channel. "And more importantly, did it make the British what they are? I think largely it did."
Dislike for one's neighbours is universal, but the combination of familiarity, contempt and a long-standing trade in insults - which saw protesters in Kent chanting "Froggy go home!" all through negotiations for the Channel tunnel - makes Anglo-French relations unique in the European Union. Each is convinced that it is the other's only worthy adversary. In the 18th century the French philosopher Montesquieu looked at Britain as proof that "the inhabitants of islands have a higher relish for liberty than those of the continent", a sentiment still going strong in 1992, when Norman Tebbit reframed it as "the blessing of insularity which has protected us against rabid dogs and dictators alike". For rabid dogs in this context read rabid foreigners. The Channel tunnel, by bringing Britain symbolically closer to Europe, might have diminished their "foreignness" in some ways, but it has also increased it. An illegal immigrant who stows himself inches from the live rail under a Eurostar train can be put to more sinister use than someone who walks over a land border: his desperation makes him alien.
The image of Britons as protectors of liberty, meanwhile, comes down to an element of what philosophers call "moral luck". That is, virtuous behaviour that comes about not as a result of moral inquiry, but as a by-product of circumstance. The circumstance in this case is geography: the Channel, by saving Britain from invasion, has allowed for its liberty-loving image never really to have been tested. Our insularity makes us at once defensive and superior. A cartoon from Punch dated 1889 features an Englishman and a Frenchman being checked out by two women on the beach. The Englishman thinks they must be laughing at him ("Confound it! Wonder if I've got a smut on my nose."), while the Frenchman assumes that the women are staring because he is hot stuff ("Evidement elles trouvent que je ne suis pas trop mal!").
The traditional British explanation for this, that self-criticism is the highest form of self-confidence, buckles under the amount of slagging we dish out to everyone else, informed by a logic which goes: we might be rubbish, but you're more rubbish. "You'll still get a laugh with a puerile, anti-French joke in Britain," says Jonathan Fenby, author of On the Brink, a contemporary study of France. "It's still acceptable in educated circles to say 'I hate the French,' a dismissive sneering that you just don't come across in France. The average French person doesn't think to the same degree about the English as vice versa."
All the same, the Sun's famous anti-tunnel headline from 1990, Up Yours Delors!, seems like a ludicrous over-reaction now, and since Kent qualified for some €35m (£23m) of EU funding, its residents have stopped shouting "frogs out". Nevertheless, the French remain offensive to the Brits at conceptual level, a necessary evil against which, for want of any more concrete evidence of who we are, we judge ourselves to be English. It is a process of hostile flirtation that is weirdly flattering to both sides. "We think we're better than the French," says Unwin, "but we think France is pretty good too. I was in Germany for a long time, and I used to watch the way the British played up to the French and not to the Germans. The Germans played up to the French and not to the British. The French have done a very good job culturally and politically of establishing that sort of inferiority complex in everybody else. The British Foreign Office people are proud that they speak good French; they don't really care whether they speak German or not."
Les is a truck driver on the Pride of Canterbury, en route to delivering 80 cubic metres of bubblewrap to the Netherlands. He finds it embarrassing, he says, that unlike their peers in mainland Europe, British customs officers rarely speak anything but English. "Lots of places in France accept sterling but hardly anywhere in Britain takes euros. Being European shouldn't threaten us. There's a truck stop at junction 27 near Neuvechateau in Belgium which is very international. We all get along. I took the wife there once."
And yet when asked about the benefits of freedom of movement within Europe, he says sadly, "The influx of foreigners to Britain has changed it all anyway. You can't deport everyone. We've just got to make the most of it." Les recently found three Iranians in the back of his truck at Calais. "They see your GB plates and make a beeline. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for human rights. But charity begins at home."
Travelling back from Calais on the French ferry Manet, I meet Sandrine and Katherine, two French women who work aboard ship as pursers. "The French are so rude," they say winsomely. "No please or thank you. We much prefer the English passengers. Their children are better behaved. The English live on an island and so are used to travelling. They never complain when there are delayed. Whereas the French ... "
This is the French brand of confidence: self-deprecation without attack. It has, perhaps, to do with their having a firmer idea of who they are. "While Britain sees itself as a nation of individuals," says Fenby, "France has this idea of etat, the over-arching state, holding things together. It's an abstract which doesn't exist to the same extent in Britain. In France, the president incarnates the nation and has a particular stature that doesn't apply to the prime minister here."
"I prefer the French to the English," says Stephen, a fireman from south London aboard the Pride of Canterbury. "They stand up for what they believe in: all those strikes. English people just fall over the first time someone shouts at them."
We dock at Calais ("malignant Calais!" as Dickens wrote, "low-lying alligator, evading the eyesight and discouraging hope!") and those on foot disembark and trudge to the bus stop for a ride into town. Paul does not get off. He is what the ferry companies term a "non-landing passenger", that is, one who takes the ferry and comes back without disembarking. "I like it as a day out - have lunch, a couple of pints then turn round and come home. I wouldn't get off the boat. Calais: horrible place." It gives him a sense of having travelled without the discomfort of actually being abroad. From this vantage point, he concludes that France is "a nice country, shame about the people. They'll take an hour and a quarter for lunch whereas I'm lucky if I get 15 minutes."
Two women stand before me in the bus queue. The driver asks them in French for the fare of €1.50, just over £1. "Wa'ss that in English?" snaps one. With the tiniest pause, the driver replies, "£2," and politely relieves them of their money.
This is a couple of weeks old, but it came up as I searched on defense and security policy. It takes a longer view of transatlantic relations and postulates that the rift between the two continents, particularly focusing on Frano-American relations, is not long term. That is, of course, without taking into consideration who is in the White House.
But, Noelle Lenoir, the French minister for Europe Affairs in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, argues again what we have heard as the official line from the French government, and from what I've gathered talking to defense experts -- Europe and the United States must cooperate, that our aims overlap, and Europe must have autonomy with military planning and capacities.
Basically, it's the message that Europe is ready to step up militarily in the world, but it needs US cooperation while preparing to step out from America's shadow.
Taipei Times - West against the rest?
The West against the rest?
Europe and the US have reacted differently to the threat of terrorism in their midst, but that does not mean Europeans are anti-American
By Noelle Lenoir
Wednesday, Mar 24, 2004,Page 9
The Madrid bombings have made Europeans feel the scourge of terrorism in their bones. March 11 is now Europe's version of Sept. 11 in the US. Yet the US and Europe often do not seem to see the world through the same glasses: Spain's response to the terrorist attacks -- a threat common to all democracies -- was to vote in a government promising an end to pro-US policy on Iraq. Does this mean that Europe and the US have dramatically different visions?
Part of the seeming disconnect on foreign policy emerges from a misunderstanding about what "Europe" is about. The European project is a realist's response to globalization and its challenges. It was initiated to create "solidarites de fait," promote political stability, and consolidate democracy and Europe's social model. Having achieved these goals, Europe now wants to make a positive contribution to world developments.
This is not nostalgia for past glory. An unprecedented degree of solidarity now exists across Europe, as was apparent in the collective mourning and outpouring of sympathy toward Spain; we must build on that huge potential to create a logic of solidarity in the world.
The US, also victim of a horrendous attack, feels drawn to the world, but not to promote a similar model of cooperation. Rather, in defending their values and security, Americans strive to defend the world, especially the Western world, from dark new threats. The messianic idealism that liberated Europe from Nazism and protected Western Europe from communism is now directed at other enemies.
With all the attention devoted to strained transatlantic relations, it is easy to overlook how often our preoccupations overlap. On issues such as terrorism, weapons proliferation, Iran, Afghanistan (where we jointly train the country's future army), and Africa (where French initiatives with US support recently succeeded in stabilizing the Ivory Coast and Congo), Europe and the US speak with a common voice. But on some issues, such as the Iraq war, Europeans are not all ready to follow the US blindly.
The world -- Europe in particular -- has fascination and admiration for the US. But today we must move away from fascination and gratitude and realize that the pursuit of European integration remains in the best interest of the US, which has supported it for 50 years. In today's world, there is clearly work for two to bring about stability and security, and in promoting common values.
In particular, the Franco-German "engine" of Europe should not be seen as a potential rival to the US. France and Germany are not an axis aspiring to be some sort of an alternative leadership to the US. Rather, the two countries form a laboratory needed for the internal working of the EU. Anyone who thinks we are building a European rival to the US has not looked properly at the facts.
Indeed, France and Germany do not get along naturally. Much sets us apart: EU enlargement, agriculture and domestic market issues. So it is not the sum of the two that matters, but the deal between the two, which should be viewed as a prototype of the emerging Europe. It is in that process, mostly inward looking, that France and Germany claim to make Europe advance.
So I do not believe that a lasting rift looms. Most Americans still see in Europe a partner with largely the same aims in the world. Most Europeans see in the US a strong friend. We are all allies of the US; our draft constitution restates the importance of the NATO link; our strategy for growth and our contribution to global stability depend on the irreplaceable nature of our relationship with the US.
This is why the US should encourage the development of a common European security and defense policy, which is merely the burden-sharing that the US has been pressing on Europe for decades. We must forge greater European military capacities simply to put in place a mechanism that allows us to stand effectively shoulder to shoulder when terrorism or other catastrophes strike one of our democracies, as just happened.
But we must also establish an autonomous European military planning capacity, because the EU might need to lead its own operations, perhaps because NATO is unwilling to. We French are opposed to building a "two-speed" Europe. But we want structured co-operation -- meaning that some European states may press ahead in defense capacity -- because we are not prepared to let the more cautious and hesitant dictate a recurrence of the Balkan tragedy of the 1990s, when Europeans couldn't act and the US wouldn't (for a while). The creation of such a capacity will make the EU a more effective transatlantic partner.
So it is hard for Europeans to understand why plans for closer European integration should be seen as anti-American. The only way to arrest such fears is through closer and more frequent dialogue. On defense and security matters, the EU's security doctrine provides a great opportunity to build on our common worries: terrorism and non-proliferation, but also the need to ensure sustainable development in all quarters of the world.
Europe and the US must pursue their aims in cooperation, while ensuring that such cooperation never becomes an alliance of the "West against the Rest." Some in the West have tried to conjure a "Clash of Civilizations" out of our troubled times. Our task is to find a way to stand together without standing against anybody in particular.
Noelle Lenoir is France's minister for Europe and a former member of the Constitutional Court, France's highest court, and has taught law at Yale University and the University of London.
This is for all you defense-industry buffs. It's another example of friction between US and France and defense. Now the pressure comes from Wall Street. EADS is Europe's largest defense contractor, a multinational company that is split between French, German and a few other satellite companies. The French government also has a one-third stake in the company, which is a primary builder of the Airbus.
European defense contractors want a larger piece of US defense contracts; but the Buy America Act has put up barriers to this. EADS set up a North American branch to navigate around this.
As this report states, if EADS wants any US investment (and with that, contracts), Wall Street analysts say it better keep the French government from gaining any more than its current stake.
Then there's the issue of a European defense market. European nations have balked at US investment in companies like HDW, a German submarine manufacturer, while at the same time asking for more cooperation and technology sharing.
The Guardian - EADS pressed to sever French link
http://www.guardian.co.uk/france/story/0,11882,1180103,00.html
EADS pressed to sever French link
David Gow
Monday March 29, 2004
The Guardian
EADS, the European aerospace and defence group, is under growing pressure from Wall Street investors to dilute or even scrap stakes held by the French government and its other two main shareholders.
It is understood that both DaimlerChrysler, the German-US cars group, and Lagardère, the French media group, have been urged by US investors keen to buy into the majority-owner of Airbus to press Paris for a synchronised sell-down.
Manfred Bischoff, EADS co-chairman and senior DC executive, warned President Jacques Chirac against turning the group into a purely French player. "In the long run, national interests would best be served if we keep EADS multinational," he told Defense News.
Analysts said yesterday EADS "can kiss goodbye to ever having a substantial US business" if it handed over control to the French state which shares equally a 30.13% stake with Lagardère. DC holds a 33% share.
The issue has come to a head because Arnaud Lagardère, son and successor to Jean-Luc at the eponymous group, has indicated his desire eventually to sell the EADS stake and focus on the media business.
Analysts said both the French group and DC would eventually like to realise the value of their EADS holdings as cash for ei ther acquisition or, in Daimler's case, consolidation of a balance sheet put under pressure by Chrysler's losses.
Mr Lagardère has said he will stick to his father's commitment to the EADS stake until the Airbus superjumbo, the 555-seater A380, has entered service in 2006 - and proven its commercial viability.
The French state, which is considering a partial privatisation of the power groups Gaz de France and Electricité de France next year, has long held the view that aerospace and defence businesses are "strategic" interests.
But Mr Bischoff told Defense News: "Often, the word 'strategic' can be replaced with 'not making money'." Analysts said it would require a substantial cultural change for Paris to allow a more distributed share ownership base.
Mr Bischoff said: "They [French officials] are concerned about ownership and fear that the company will be managed only on quarterly results."
With the European defence market worth $180bn (£100bn) compared with the $400bn-plus American market, EADS is keen to reach its target of 10% profit margins by taking on more US military business.
Last year, with the A380's $1bn annual development costs eating into earnings, the group made €1.54bn (£1.03bn) pre-tax profits and says it will make €1.8bn this year.
Last week Robert E. Hunter, who was the U.S. ambassador to NATO under Clinton, answered questions regarding the expansion of NATO to 26 countries with the addition of seven new members. He responded to a question from Post editors whether an ESDP would leave NATO irrelevant. His response was basically "Yeah, right."
Europe doesn't have the capabilities - yet - he argued to go it alone in security matters. His argument is that Europe still needs the United States and NATO in Europe and will for many years to come. Eventually, however, the US might be able to "go home" and let Europe deal with itself. For now, an ESDP would be a complement to NATO.
This is a slightly different picture than officials we spoke with portrayed. While I think they'd all agree that NATO will continue to be the dominant player for some time, an ESDP wouldn't necessarily be a complementary entity. The view is that NATO is just another option in the great big European toolbox of defense. Hunter argues that Europe still doesn't have the tools.
Washington Post.com - NATO conversation with Amb. Robert E. Hunter
washingtonpost.com
World: NATO
Amb. Robert E. Hunter
NATO Ambassador Under President Clinton
Monday, March 29, 2004; 4:00 PM
The prime ministers of seven new NATO member nations are being welcomed to the White House by President Bush today. The leaders of Bulgaria, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia, expand the alliance to 26 countries.
Robert E. Hunter, NATO ambassador under President Clinton and Senior Advisor at the RAND Corporation, will be online to discuss the expansion of NATO and today's White House ceremony.
Submit your questions and comments before or during today's discussion.
Editor's Note: Washingtonpost.com moderators retain editorial control over Live Online discussions and choose the most relevant questions for guests and hosts; guests and hosts can decline to answer questions.
________________________________________________
Amb. Robert E. Hunter: This afternoon, President Bush welcomed 7 new countries to NATO -- bringing the total to 26. That is 10 new countries from Central Europe and the former Soviet Union in the last five years. Clearly, NATO will be different; but just how different is the critical question. Much is already known -- for instance, that all members have the same rights and responsibilities, that all will join the integrated command structure, Allied Command Operations, that all will be covered by Article 5 of the 1949 North Atlantic Treaty, which commits all allies to come to the defense of any any that is attacked, and that all must now also look beyond Europe -- "out of area" in NATO jargon -- to new challenges as far afield as Afghanistan and Iraq. As before, US engagement and leadership are critical; as before, the US needs to sustain its involvement on a bipartisan basis.
_______________________
Lyme, Conn.: What are your thoughts on concerns that expansion of NATO may make it more difficult for NATO to reach a consensus on how to act? Since some military actions require quick decisions, how well will NATO be able to balance consulting its member nations while making responsive actions?
Amb. Robert E. Hunter: It may seem that the larger NATO becomes -- as of today, it has 26 members, only 5 years ago it had only 16 -- the harder it will become to take decisions, which, as the questioner knows, are always taken by consensus: indeed, NATO never takes a formal vote. But what seems obvious may not be so. In the first place, the new members are deeply devoted to the same principles as the existing members -- in particular to preserving and extending security in Europe. Furthermore, NATO has always been most effective when there is vigorous debate about it should do -- and not do -- against a background of knowledge both that having an alliance that works is critical to all and that, when it has taken a decision, NATO has never failed in what it has set out to do. Thus, with 16 members or 26, the task is the same: for all the allies to become convinced that a particular counse of action is important; and for their to be effective leadership -- and particularly American leadership. This leadership -- and a reputation for probity, good judgment, and commitment to allied security -- remains vital to the alliance; and this administration like those before it must husband that resource. If it does so -- in particular to move beyond the crisis of the last year, then the number of allies will not be that important.
At the same time, NATO must increasingly be able to act speedily, especially of there are crises, or even with "routing" efforts like the current NATO engagement in Afghanistan. This is not a matter of "how many" allies, however, but of the methods and procedures the alliance follows to get decisions made quickly. To this end, the new Allied Command Transformation in Norfolk is crafting new means of achieving "decision superiority" for NATO, and all the allies are working toward that end. But one thing is clear: one of the key elements of NATO is its consensus rule, which stimulates all the allies to take critical matters seriously, and to work together to preserve the alliance for all the tasks ahead.
_______________________
washingtonpost.com: Would a coordinated EU foreign and defense policy replace NATO for many European nations and thus render the alliance irrelevant?
Amb. Robert E. Hunter: Wouldn't it be wonderful if the EU had a foreign and security policy that would lead Europeans to take full responsibility for European security, and let the US just go home?! But that is not likely to happen, at least not for many years. The Europeans are not yet so organized that they can "do security" by themselves, and they do not have the tools needed, as are found in the NATO integrated command structure and more than half a century of working together, a precious asset that is not easily duplicated. But the EU is beginning to do more -- in Macedonia, for instance, and later this year to take over full responsibility for security from NATO in Bosnia.
America is still needed in Europe -- and that means NATO is still needed -- in terms of the great historic imponderables, including insurance that the 20th century, the worst century ever for war and human suffering, is well and truly in the past; and working to ensure that the future of Russia will not again lead to a fundamental rupture in arrangements for European security. In addition, the European Union does not have the capacity -- and is unlikely anytime soon to gain the capacity -- to act beyond Europe, as NATO is doing in Afghanistan and is likely to do in Iraq. Thus the European Security and Defense Policy (an adjunct of the Common Foreign and Security Policy) can be a useful complement to NATO, but the EU will not replace NATO, and certainly not US power and engagement, at least for many years to come.
_______________________
washingtonpost.com: Will Russia ever join NATO?
Amb. Robert E. Hunter: Russia in NATO? In theory, yes. Indeed, officially, NATO membership is open to any member of the OSCE that is "ready and willing to shoulder the responsibilities of NATO membership." But for Russia to join would require major changes in that country, including assurance that democracy is well rooted; and it would require Russia to meet all the other aspects of NATO membership, measured also in terms of its relations with other countries.
More important, would the rest of the alliance be prepared to extend to Russia guarantees of all its borders against external armed attack -- for example, some day against China? If the Western nations were so disposed, it is very likely that they would work out this business with Russia by other means; and, indeed, they would want to do all that is possible so that this eventuality did not come to pass.
At heart, if the security situation in Eurasia reached the point where Russia could be considered for membership in NATO to be a serious proposition, things would probably be so positive that NATO would not any longer be needed!
Because of all of these argument, Russia has not suggested joining NATO, and no one in the West has proposed it. Instead, there is now a NATO-Russia Council, which seeks to treat Russia like an equal, to bring it into NATO deliberations when its interests are truly engaged, to build cooperation, including in areas like peacekeeping and -- in time -- security for the Middle East, and to extend security truly in a "Europe whole and free." But Russia does not have to be in NATO to be part of NATO -- and the test will be how all these countries work together to build security across Eurasia.
_______________________
Cumberland, Md.: While it is nice to have new members in NATO -- it is doubtful if they can carry their weight militarily or even spend the money on defense that is required to upgrade their out-of-date equipement. I question the value of accepting new members in NATO who are militarily underpowered. Your comments please?
Amb. Robert E. Hunter: When we set out to take in new NATO members a decade ago, I invented a slogan to put this point: a country to join NATO would have to be a "produce and not just a consumer of security." Now, that does not mean being able to mount a defense like that of the Cold War. None of these new countries, or any of the "old" NATO allies (with the possible exception of Turkey, on the Iraqi border) faces an external military threat. What we need from the new countries is that they democratize their military forces, that they adopt NATO standards in equipment and practice, that they take part in Allied Command Operations (however little), that they be able to coordinate their activities, their equipment, and their training with NATO -- and that the continue efforts to deepen democracy and market economies, and continue their renunciation of claims against neighbors. At the same time, there is an interest in having these countries make some contribution to the newer tasks, including doing what they can to counter terrorism (and that can including police work, intelligence, and border control within their own countries) and to join, in however limited a way, in common decisions NATO takes to be engaged in places like Afghnistan and Iraq. This is part of a total security concept: and the amount of money spent on military forces is not the key point -- indeed, NATO does not want Central European countries to spend so much money that they may retard the development of their economies.
_______________________
Little Rock, Ark.: Will or should NATO ever get increasingly involved in the Iraqi conflict like it has in the Balkans?
Amb. Robert E. Hunter: I predict that, within a year, NATO will have taken over responsibility for much if not all external military engagement in Iraq, under a UN mandate. This is a logical extension of what NATO has already done successfully in the Balkans (neither Bosnia or Kosovo is yet successful politically and economically but, except for the recent violence in Kosovo, neither has experienced the conflict of the pre-NATO period), and is beginning to do in Afghanistan. The US is reaching the point of acknowledging that we would like help in Iraq -- in military deployments, in reconstruction, in development of post-Saddam politics -- and that many of the allied countries have capabilities that can be of significan benefit. What is required is that we be willing to share influence and decision-making as well as responsibility and burdens: something that may seem obvious, but which official Washington has not yet been prepared to do.
At heart, whether or not we should have gone to war in Iraq, it is over. The old security system has been shattered. Both we and the Europeans have a vital interest -- vital self-interests -- in putting something viable in its place. And how better to do that, from the point of view of all concerned, than through NATO?
_______________________
washingtonpost.com: How has perceived unilateralism affected the United States' leadership role in NATO?
Amb. Robert E. Hunter: NATO is now slowly emerging from the worst crisis in its history, occasioned in major part because the United States, along with Britain, chose to presecute a war in Iraq without adequate reason to do so, and certainly without being able to bring along the NATO allies as a whole. Even if the US could be argued to have had no choice, the way we went about it gratuitously weakened our reputation for probity, cooperation, consultation, and sound judgement. But the Alliance is, in the end, about what countries either do or do not do together in their common interests -- and common values -- for the future. And if wiser heads prevail, on both sides of the Atlantic -- and there is evidence this is beginning to happen -- then the Western alliance can regain must of its former strength. And the US can gain much of its former leadership: but that must be on the basis of looking to others for counsel rather than obedience; seeking to build cooperation and common understanding rather than an assertion of "our way or the highway." The latter method has been tried and found wanting. We know now that we have to have allies and partners to shape the world to our (and their) liking; and if we act on that insight, we can regain the highground that was so woefully lost last year. In sum, the US disposes of great incipient power, unrivalled, perhaps, in history; but to change that incipient power into lasting influence, we must create institutions, attitudes, practices, and policies that work for us....because they also work for others.
_______________________
Washington, D.C.: If there is no threat to these new members, why is NATO installing air defense over the Baltics, thus to treat Russia as the enemy? While Putin has much more important things to do, like growing the Russian economy, and the level-headed Russians I talk to don't get too excited over the Baltics (though they think this "Article 5 protection" emboldens the Baltics on the language question), it merely encourages the unreformed Russian military to keep trumpeting the threat from the West and the need to keep their old formations. So is this air defense gesture really necessary?
Amb. Robert E. Hunter: You put your finger on a key problem. On the one hand, countries have to be able to do at least a minium to guarantee the sanctity of their borders and their air space. As NATO members, there at least needs to be some means for what is called "air policing" -- hence, the four F-16s (and some limited other equipments) that will be deployed in Lithuania: these are no threat to Russia, and cannot be so represented. Indeed, nothing that has been done in any of the new allied states, or that anyone contemplates doing, can pose such a treat or honestly be represented as doing so. But on the other hand, it is also important that, with the expansion of NATO, Russia not be pushed away or even have a sense is it being pushed away. That is one reason Lithuania has worked out arrangements with Russia (and Belarus) for the movement of people to/from Kaliningrad, a part of Russia now separated from it by NATO territory. That is why NATO is pressing Latvia to treat is major Russian minority with dignity. It is why NATO and Russia have created the NATO-Russia Council in Brussels, in which Russia is equal with the now 26 NATO allies. And it is why NATO has sought to engage Russia in peacekeeping (as in Bosnia and Kosovo), and has a raft of common activities (see the NATO website for a list). But this must all be done deftly; there has since NATO began its venture of playing a lead role in crafting a "Europe whole and free," it has had to be sure that it advaces the legitimate security interests both of Central European states and of Russia; and it must continue to do this. (This is particular true with regard to any bases and permenent deployments in former Warsaw Pact territory: in the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act, NATO included a unilateral statement that imposed a number of limitations on what it would do in this regard. It is not violating the letter of these pledges; but it must be careful, as well, to honor the spirit).
_______________________
Kansas City, Mo.: For some time, I have heard a Russian point-of-view that the US made commitments at the end of the Cold War to limit NATO enlargement. Michael Mandelbaum has referred to such commitments in his opposition to NATO expansion. I've heard other policymakers and scholars say that no such commitments were made, and that NATO is free to enlarge. Apparently the US would also be free to restructure its military deployments, away from Germany and to "New Europe."
What's the right story here?
Amb. Robert E. Hunter: No such commitments were made. When I was US ambassador to NATO in the 1990s, we researched the case thoroughly, to be sure that we were honoring all pledges made. At the same time, NATO enlargement has not taken place in a vacuum, as though Russia has no importance. Quite the contrary: it is engaged in the NATO-Russia Council, in NATO peacekeeping (at one point in both Bosnia and Kosovo), in exercises, and even now moving in the direction of "interoperability" with NATO equipment.
The US redeployments easterward are ostensibly to have different kinds of bases -- some just for runways and storage of supplies -- that would make deployments farther east, for instance to Middle East crisis regions, easier. This is still being debated. And it needs to be undertaken with several points in mind: military efficiency and cost are only one factor. We also have to reassure the Germans and others in West Europe that we are not shifting our focus decisively away from Europe; and we have to assure the Russians that we are not taking advantage of their weakness. In fact, nothing the US is thinking of doing could pose a threat to Russia, but it is critical that whatever is done be done in full "transparence" -- indeed in consultations -- with Russia, which does, indeed, share many of the US and allied objectives with regard to countering terrorism and limiting the spread of weapons of mass destruction.
_______________________
Alexandria, Va.: Are there other countries that wish to join NATO? Now that the Cold War is behind us what is the rational for joining the group?
Amb. Robert E. Hunter: Secretary countries in the Balkans want to join NATO -- Croatia, Serbia, Macedonia, and Albania -- and all may do so. Their reasoning is the same as that of the countries that have already joined: to "bring history to an end," in the sense of being the playthings of the Great Powers; to have an association with the EU (with tends to follow) and with the US; to have an added incentive domestically to put down deep democrtic roots; and to gain -- they believe -- the benefits in terms of foreign investment and confidence that can come with NATO membership. In addition, Ukraine has expressed an interest in joining NATO -- in its case to become mroe certain of its relationship with Russia, as well as to gain economic benefits. Georgia has said it will apply for membership and Azerbaijan is moving in that direction. But beyond the Balkans and perhasp Ukraine (leading aside, for some time, Belarua and Moldova), one has to ask just how big NATO can become and still retain a sense of common purpose, and also a willingness of each of its members to give security guarantees -- and NATO's security guarantees must always be real -- to farflung states. The Caucasus is a long way away from NATO-Europe, strategically and politically; most allies would be reluctant to take on the burdens of potentially having to defense Georgia; and they would not want to do so regarding Azerbaijan while it is still at war with Armenia: and yet, these are precisely reasons these two countries are interested in NATO -- and Azerbaijan also speaks both of Russia and Iran in terms of its concerns, something that most if not all the European NATO allies shy away from getting involved in. So -- NATO is a successful venture; but it must not be seen as the be-all and end-all for everyone. The farther from Europe, the more there needs to be creativity about something else -- e.g., a new security system, crafted on 21st century lines, for at least major parts of what is being called the "Greater Middle East."
_______________________
Warsaw, Poland: What role will NATO play in the war against terrorism?
Amb. Robert E. Hunter: Counter-terrorism is most about non-military activities -- as Secretary of Defense and others have said. It is about intelligence, policy work, border control, etc., etc. -- most of which are activities carried out by other institutions and relationships, both singly and in groups. There is also the task of trying to "dry up the sea within which the terrorist fish swim," which, if anything, is the task of institutions like the European Union (in a new strategic partnership with the US). Militarily, there is work to do, of course, and most of that is in the realm of either special forces or of the kind of "reconstruction" and "stabilization" work that is being done in Afghanistan and Iraq (which becamse a terrorism problem only after the war). This is not about high intensity warfare, except in rare circumstances (such as the anti-Taliban period after 9/11).
Thus NATO has already assumed command of ISAF, the International Security Assistance Force, and it is developing Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs). Indeed, if NATO gets more deeply engaged in Afghanisan to do what is needed so that it will cease being a base for the export of terrorism (if "cease" can be achieved, which is a daunting task), then this could become the most ambitous task the Alliance has undertaken since the end of the Cold War. Similarly, NATO is likely to take over major responsibilities in Iraq, which have their own counter-terrorism aspects.
_______________________
Cumberland, Md.: NATO is more and more becoming relatively useless as a military alliance for the U.S.
Too many members, including France and Germany, are unwilling to spend the money for up-to-date military hardware. These countries cannot keep up with the US on the battlefield -- Should we not compel them to assume peacekeeping duties and take over from the U.S. in the Balkans?
Amb. Robert E. Hunter: We have to be careful about reading too much into what we read in the newspapers, especially at a time when there has been so much bad blood across the Atlantic.
As we look down the road, it is not clear that there is a signficant range of possibilities where the "big batallions" will be needed, at least in terms of Allied engagement militarily. What is needed, clearly, is special forces, in particular for counter-terrorism; the kinds of stabilization forces that are now going into Afghanistan and Iraq; and the ability of allied forces to be able to fight together -- which means truly compatible C4ISR -- an abbreviation for command, control, communications, computors, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. It will also mean a sharing of high technology so that allies can field these equipments that can work together (here, the US has been especially laggard in easing restrictions in the flow of high technology -- we can't have it both ways!).
This does mean more capabilities by many of the Europeans; but less in terms of major power projection at the high end of combat than in the ability to get appropriate forces to a theater, quickly (air and sea lift) and to keep them there for a period of time (logisitics and support). The EU has been creating a Rapid Reaction Force, one of whose virtues is that it simulates some of the governments to spend money on defense, in order to promote European unity, that they might not otherwise spend. And NATO is developing a NATO Response Force, which will be able to deploy forces in as little as 5 days and keep them deployed for a signficant period of time.
Note also that one country we have been criticizing -- France -- has been engaged in NATO's major activities: it has more resources committed to the NATO Response Force than any other European ally; it is sending more officers to Allied Command Operations and Allied Command Transformation; and it has about 250 special forces fighting in Afganistan, under US command! And before NATO took over command of the International Security Assistance Force in Afganistan, the Germans (and the Dutch) had the command.
Yes, the allies can do more -- and will also be doing more in Macedonia (an EU operation) and later this year in Bosnia (taking over from NATO). And most if not all will be willing to engage with the US, Britain, etc., in Iraq, as a NATO operation, if we are prepared to have an appropriate UN resolution (which would also lead Spain to keep its troops there, as the new prime minister has made clear) -- which means our being prepared to share some of the decision-making and influence as well as the responsibility and the burdens (understanding, of course, that we would still be the "800-pound gorilla" in terms of influence.)
_______________________
Tallahassee, Fla.: ".....in major part because the United States, along with Britain, chose to presecute a war in Iraq without adequate reason to do so..."
I must say I am a bit shocked by your comment here. Especially since the 911 commission has been grilling everyone on the cost of inaction against the Taliban. Why do you think these new member countries, that lived under supression for so long, joined the coalition and supported the war in Iraq? Or would you, like Senator Kerry, just say they were bribed or coerced?
Amb. Robert E. Hunter: "Cost of inaction against the Taliban." Yes. But it is not clear that a war in Iraq helped against the Taliban, or al Qaeda, or terrorism, or what was done to us on 9/11.
Be that as it may, we are in Iraq, and the Middle East, for the next generation. No matter who is president will have to face that fact. And the Europeans, too. This is our engagement for as far ahead as we can see. But we must not in the process lose sight of what we as Americans are most concerned about: terrorism here, against our people, and potentially being visited here, again. That is the priority, and going into Iraq did little to advance that cause.
_______________________
Virginia: What must a country do to be offered NATO membership?
Amb. Robert E. Hunter: Be a democracy with firm roots. Be committed to a market economy (success upfront not required: that can be aided by belonging to NATO). Renunciation of any claims against neighbors (note the achievement of Hungary and Romania). Reform (including democratization) of the military. Adaptation to NATO methods and standards. And geographic relevance (i.e., not so far distant that existing allies will be reluctant to provide the security guarantee of Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty).
It is a tribute to NATO's past, its future, and the role of American leadership and engagement that so many countries want to join this alliance -- of both interests and values.
_______________________
Falls Church, Va.: Is there a list of countries that have especially close ties with NATO, so that they can be more easily included in intra-NATO agreements and exercises? Are NATO standards pushed to non-NATO countries (for example, Australia or Sweden)?
Amb. Robert E. Hunter: Sweden (and Finland) yes -- indeed, they could join anytime they wanted to, as meeting every conceivable criterion (including being "producers and not just consumers of security.") Australia (etc.), no: can one see that it would give a commitment to fight for countries in Europe? (It did do so in WWI and WWII, along with New Zealand, but more was involved than geopolitics).
For NATO to have relevance, in terms of members being willing freely to make the commitment under Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, to mutual self-defense, there has to be a solid basis for doing so and meaning it. Geography is at least one element of that. Some other form of engagement that includes Australia (etc)? Fine, and a number exist.....
_______________________
Amb. Robert E. Hunter: In sum: what we are seeing, today, in taking in 7 more countries to NATO, is a further step in fulfilling the potential -- and the promise -- of a "Europe whole and free" -- the first time in all of European history when there has been a chance of creating a security system from which all countries in "Europe" (and that includes the US and Canada) can benefit and which will penalize none. NATO is many elements, and all are critical. As devised in the 1990s -- and I was honored to have the chance to play a role -- NATO crafted a coherent strategy, consisting of several parts:
o the US as a permanent "European power"
o preservation of the integrated military command structure;
o continued support for the "European Civil Space" and the end of the "German problem"
o enlargement to Central Europe
o Partnership for Peace, to get countries ready for membership and provide security and involvement for those who do not join
o Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council
o NATO-Russia Council
o NATO-Ukraine Commission
o NATO-ESDP relationship (European Union)
o new command structures
o Bosnia-Kosovo-Afghanistan-Iraq.
"something for everyone." But requiring robust common action, no "something for nothing." And firmly dependent on US leadership, commitment, and wisdom.
_______________________
© 2004 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive
Of course, many of the people we spoke to in Europe want Bush out of the White House. I heard no support for the Bush White House in Europe except for the wife of a U.S. State Department bureaucrat living in Brussels.
But, that doesn't mean that trans-Atlantic relations will be any better, according to this article. Kerry might not be so blunt, he may be able to discuss nuances of European politics in French, but, as this article points out, the US and Europe will likely continue to approach the world's problems differently.
The comments from Sen. Joe Biden amplify this. He doesn't believe the Europeans are willing to do what it takes (i.e. spend the money) to create a ESDP and the prospect of an EU army is risible, to him. (He needs to listen to Sarah's report.)
International Herald Tribune - Europe in for a letdown if it's counting on Kerry
Politicus: Europe in for a letdown if it's counting on Kerry
John Vinocur IHT
Tuesday, March 30, 2004
WASHINGTON At one end of a marble hall in the U.S. House of Representatives' Sam Rayburn office building, George W. Bush's re-election aspirations were taking a jostling. Testimony before the Sept. 11 commission contended that the self-described war president had not paid attention early or fully enough to warnings about Al Qaeda's murderous capabilities.
About 100 strides down the hall, at the same time last week, some of Europe's grandest illusions about what a new Democratic administration might mean to the European Union were also being jarred, minus the din and camera lights next door. Congress's leading Democratic voices on foreign policy, with a trace of the disdain that so rankles Europeans, suggested that their critical view of the European Union's weaknesses was intact, and that in puckering up for a November embrace Europe might have to settle for a formalistic kiss.
This may come as a surprise in Europe, where wide segments of opinion, official and public, confidential or boisterous, want Bush beaten. Many influential Europeans seem to believe that Senator John Kerry in a Democratic White House would restore both respectful equanimity to the American side of the trans-Atlantic relationship and, perhaps more naïvely, aim to redefine U.S. interests in a way that did not seem so self-interestedly American.
Pushed to the extreme, this might be called the European School for Reforming America. In this notion, a needy United States seeks out European counsel, converts to multilateralism and submits get-tough inclinations to the United Nations for the veto-ready muster of China, Russia and France. In the Rayburn Building's Gold Room, such tones were unmistakably absent from the remarks of Senator Joseph Biden, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and of Representative Tom Lantos, the ranking Democrat on the House International Relations Committee. At a seminar sponsored by the University of Michigan, Biden and Lantos were joined by Henry Hyde, the Republican chairman of the House committee, and Madeleine Albright, secretary of state under Bill Clinton, to talk about the European Union and the United States before a group that included the German and French ambassadors in Washington.
In looking eternally inward, Biden said, the European Union's leading members had for the most part had taken their eye off the ball about the rest of the world. Europeans misguidedly tended to regard the United States as an imperial power, he added. And their leaders offered no really constructive alternatives to the Iraq war.
Recalling that he had talked to six European government chiefs about the war, Biden caricatured how they would have done things better. "Blah blah blah, international cooperation," the senator mimicked. He added, in his own voice, "Give me a break, huh."
When Biden offered the possibility, beyond more civility, of a future in contrast to the Bush administration, it was in a plague-on-your-houses context. He said of the two, Europe and Bush, "You have fallen in love with international institutions to the extent that this administration has fallen in love with unilateral action."
For good measure, Biden threw in the view that the European Union will not have a unified foreign policy, and with it, the phrase, "I hope you do, I wish you well, but I see no evidence you're going to spend the money needed" to create a serious European military force either.
Biden left the prospect of a trans-Atlantic emotional healing to Lantos, who was born in Europe. He saw none at hand. There was no hatred in America for Europe, he said, just "disenchantment and disillusion." The new American college generation "couldn't care less" about Europe.
Indeed, for Lantos, the European-American bond was now "a cold-blooded, cynical relationship." Perhaps a bit ironically, he then explained the situation as a basis for optimism in that it perhaps made for more rationality on both sides.
All this, word for word, might not be Kerry's party's message in the strictest sense. Yet it came from the mouths of two influential Democrats who did not get to their leading roles in forming congressional opinion on foreign affairs by nonconsensual posturing or freaky one-man crusades. Indeed, Kerry would very much need their support if he wanted to reverse the Bush administration and participate in the International Criminal Court or the Kyoto Protocol on the environment - symbolic issues for Europe that European ambassadors here do not expect to rank high among the candidate's priorities if elected. In fact, since getting cornered with a remark that many foreign leaders wanted him to win (and for reasons of discretion, not being able to identify them when pressed by the Bush campaign), Kerry has had effectively to disavow two such endorsements with an advisory that he would neither seek nor accept support from overseas.
Part of this was a no-brainer in the American political context: A statement of backing for Kerry from former Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad of Malaysia prompted Rand Beers, Kerry's foreign policy adviser, to describe the ex-leader as "an avowed anti-Semite whose views are totally deplorable."
The other pledge of support required much more subtlety, bearing as it did the mark of those in Europe who would cast Kerry as an American flagellant, ready for a virtual apology to all for America's size, strength, and national instincts. Before he was elected prime minister of Spain, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero said he was "aligning" himself with the Democrat. After Zapatero's victory and his statement that Spain would pull its troops out of Iraq if UN authorization was not forthcoming, Kerry was caught in the position of having to deal with a self-appointed European ally apparently clueless about American politics. Kerry urged Zapatero to reconsider on Iraq and said he should "send a message that terrorists cannot win by their acts of terror."
Ivo Daalder of the Brookings Institution, who served as foreign policy adviser to the Howard Dean campaign for the Democratic nomination, verbally shrugged. If Kerry wins, he said, there may be a new effort at better understanding, but "there's going to be real disappointment in Europe, in terms of their expectations, about everything being hunky-dory again. I don't think many Europeans understand U.S. politics."
Biden suggested at least one did. He told his audience of visiting an unnamed European leader whose government opposed the war in Iraq. Do you think it's more important to have the situation in Iraq righted than to see Bush defeated, the senator asked the European.
The leader cleared his throat, hemmed and hawed, began three different sentences, and, according to Biden, finally gave an answer. "Yes," he said.
Copyright © 2002 The International Herald Tribune
These are only two of the many recent articles where Senator John Kerry is accused of being too French and of his cousin trying to distance Kerry from his Gallic relations and tendencies, presumably for his benefit.
But the undercurrents of such accusations tend to suggest that rift between the U.S. and France, at least with the Bush administration in the White House, isn't showing any signs of mending.
On the other hand, as the article mentions, the editor of Le Monde approvingly told a New York audience that Kerry "looks French."
International Herald Tribune - Globalist: If Kerry 'looks French,' look for an ugly fight
Chicago Tribune - Sen. Kerry's French connection
Globalist: If Kerry 'looks French,' look for an ugly fight
Roger Cohen IHT
Saturday, April 3, 2004
PARIS It is not going to be a pretty American election. Already the Bush administration has embarked on a campaign to portray John Kerry as a flip-flopping, tax-raising, European-educated wimp. The presumptive Democratic candidate has responded by describing the president as a job-destroying, budget-busting, alliance-breaking unilateralist.
But perhaps the surest indication that the looming political season will be ugly has come from repeated Republican suggestions that Kerry “looks French.”
Not only that: the senator is said to betray a dubious fondness for things French, even the language. A recent comment from Commerce Secretary Don Evans that the Massachusetts Democrat is “of a different political stripe and looks French” was only the latest of several jibes, mainly from conservative talk-show hosts and columnists, that have included allusions to “Monsieur Kerry” and “Jean Chéri.”
For some months now, the Republican House majority leader, Tom DeLay, has been opening speeches to supporters with an occasional routine. He says hi, then adds: “Or, as John Kerry might say, 'Bonjour.'”
The remark “always brings the house down,” said DeLay's spokesman, Stuart Roy, who added that its purpose was to highlight “Mr. Kerry's lack of support for the war on terror and the way he seems to be in agreement with the arguments of the French.” What is going on here? Ever since the Iraq war divided the Atlantic Alliance and the French government emerged as its most vociferous opponent, France has become a dirty word in some Republican circles. The France-bashing has had its lighter side - French fries disappearing from menus - but it has been no laughing matter. The criticism has carried the serious suggestion that France is not to be trusted. So if Kerry “looks French," the inference is clear enough.
Impugning the patriotism of a Vietnam war hero may seem an outlandish political tactic. But the Republicans have focused on other aspects of Kerry's life. He attended a Swiss boarding school and speaks good French; his maternal grandparents had a house in a village in Brittany, Saint-Briac-sur-Mer, where he spent several vacations; he has a French first cousin, the ecologist politician Brice Lalonde. The Republican National Committee recently circulated this last fact. Asked why, Christine Iverson, a committee spokeswoman, said the French family was not a big issue because Kerry would “be judged on his support for tax increases, not on his fondness for brie and Evian.” As for Lalonde, now the mayor of Saint-Briac, he is reluctant to be drawn into his cousin's campaign.
Many others in France have been less reticent. The broad French hope that Kerry will replace Bush in the White House is no secret. The Democratic candidate has been getting very good press; Jean-Marie Colombani, the editor of Le Monde, recently told a New York audience that Kerry “even looks French.” This time, the tone was one of approval.
Nicole Bacharan, a political scientist, sees several reasons for the French embrace of Kerry. A conviction that Americans will not re-elect a president widely seen in France as arrogant, simplistic and dangerous. A belief that Kerry will embrace old allies like France. Neglect and incomprehension of the large swathe of American society that finds Bush attractive. A subliminal association of John Forbes Kerry with another JFK, one beloved in France.
“There is a nostalgia for the Kennedy years and a hatred of Mr. Bush that I have never known for another American president,” Bacharan said. “So the French have just blocked out the America of religious faith and straight talk that likes Bush.” Much, it seems, is being blocked out in the talk of Kerry's French side. It is true that some of his promised policies seem attractive to many Europeans. He favors diplomatic engagement - in the past with Vietnam, today with Iran. He has castigated the Bush administration for its “intoxication with the pre-eminence of American power.” He has said he understands the need to “cooperate and compromise with our allies and friends.” He has vowed “to replace unilateral action with collective security.”
But Kerry also voted in favor of the war in Iraq - a fact not much aired in France - and urged the new Spanish Prime Minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, to refrain from withdrawing Spain's troops from Iraq.
The fact is that Kerry understands the reality of post-9/11 America, one often only dimly perceived in Europe. The attack, like Pearl Harbor, changed the country, pushed national security back to the center of the political agenda for the first time since the end of the cold war, and almost certainly made any candidate not strong on defense and tackling terrorism unelectable.
As a result, the differences on foreign policy between Bush and Kerry, while distinct, may be less radical than they appear. The president is not as isolated or as isolationist as he is sometimes portrayed, and Kerry is not as beholden to his multilateralist convictions as the French might wish. “Multilateralist when you can, unilateralist when you must” is how Richard Holbrooke, an adviser to Kerry, describes the candidate.
Still, in an election as tight as this one, the Republicans will do all they can to associate Kerry with what they see as the French penchant for conciliatory weakness and slow-moving international institutions.
The French theme in the campaign is likely to endure, much to the displeasure of Nathalie Loiseau, a French Embassy spokeswoman in Washington. “I regret that anyone would consider that portraying someone as French is negative,” she said. “This is a country of immigrants, after all.” Indeed: Kerry's paternal grandfather Frederick Kerry (born Fritz Kohn) arrived in America from Europe in 1905.
As for the Kerry campaign, it is adopting a certain hauteur in the French affair. “There are more important things to talk about, like affordable health care,” said Stephanie Cutter, a Kerry spokeswoman. “Mr. Kerry is an American citizen.”
Chicago Tribune
Sen. Kerry's French connection
Not wanting to hurt his election chances, relatives in Brittany downplay affiliations
By Jocelyn Gecker
Associated Press
Published April 5, 2004
ST.-BRIAC-SUR-MER, France -- John Kerry's relatives in France bristle at jabs from across the Atlantic that the presidential contender has a French connection.
They say Kerry has no link to France other than the home his grandparents bought here.
"John Kerry is incredibly American," says Brice Lalonde, Kerry's cousin and mayor of this seaside Brittany village. "He has absolutely nothing French about him."
For another cousin, Christopher Curtis: "This is an American story. John is an all-American guy with the benefit of having spent some time overseas."
With the race for the White House turning nasty--and France-U.S. ties not quite mended from the Iraq war--Kerry's Gallic clan, when questioned, talks up his American-ness. Some are keeping a low profile, saying too much talk about France could be political arsenic.
As Lalonde puts it: "I'm afraid to hurt him."
But that hasn't stopped the Frenchman from pasting Kerry bumper stickers on his car--hardly a common sight in this 16th Century village.
St. Briac, near the port city of St. Malo, is a place of rugged seascapes and narrow, cobbled lanes that inspired Renoir and other Impressionists. It was here that the senator from Massachusetts spent boyhood summers and has said he traced his first inspiration to become a politician.
But nowhere on Kerry's Web site does he mention his summers in France or the family estate, known as Les Essarts, a sprawling property on a bluff over the sea.
"Monsieur Bush is angry with France," says Ian Forbes, an 85-year-old Kerry uncle who lives at Les Essarts. "We don't want to accentuate the connection between Johnny and France."
Kerry's maternal grandparents, James Grant Forbes and Margaret Winthrop--a descendant of Massachusetts' first governor, John Winthrop--bought the estate in the 1920s. They had 11 children, including the mothers of Kerry, Lalonde and Curtis, a British-American who lives in Paris. The home served as a summer hub for their cosmopolitan clan.
In his youth, Kerry joined the family gatherings while his father, a U.S. diplomat, was posted in Europe. Young Kerry also attended a Swiss boarding school and brought a touch of America to this corner of northwestern France.
"He introduced us to games like capture the flag. We still play something called kick the can," said Lalonde, who at 58 is two years Kerry's junior.
Politics also run in the family here. Lalonde was environment minister under then-President Francois Mitterrand. Like his American cousin, Lalonde ran for president. But that was 1981 and he received less than 4 percent of the French vote.
Kerry's campaign and his days in France have been widely reported here. A recent story in Liberation newspaper was headlined, "John Kerry, too Frenchy for the Republicans." It catalogued insults by allies of President Bush and the tendency of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay to start speeches with: "Good afternoon, or as John Kerry might say, `Bonjour.'"
For Lalonde, Kerry's long, angular face "resembles Abraham Lincoln, without the beard."
The French media like to compare John Forbes Kerry, who speaks fluent French, to John F. Kennedy.
This is an argument that has received some attention outside of the mainstream media, but has been derided by many critics as essentially flawed.
Being a little shaky on global economics, its hard for me to really weigh in here, but it does seem interesting.
Basically, the argument is that in 2000 when Iraq switched its currency for oil transactions to euros from dollars (in its oil for food transacations), that was a key reason why the US became obsessed with taking over the country. Because Iran and Venezuela had also voiced similar sentiments, and due to unsurity about the political situation in Saudi Arabia, its key OPEC ally, the US wanted to stave off a move to the euro by these 3 OPEC countries and perhaps others following suit.
So, to protect the hegemony of the dollar as the international reserve currency b/c of the huge volume of oil transactions, it was in the US interest to try to preserve all these petrodollars around the world.
Anyway, like I said, I dont really understand what the impact of turning all those dollars into euros would be, and how that would affect the overall value of the dollar, etc., but I wonder how oil politics play into the respecitve attitudes of the US and European countries towards Iraq. Heres some perspectives on the issue. If you like long conspiracy theories, check out the last link.
The Globalist - Iraq, the Dollar and the Euro
NY Times - Whos Afraid of the Euro?
Revisited - The Real Reasons for the War with Iraq
Iraq, the Dollar and the Euro
By Hazel Henderson | Monday, June 02, 2003
The euro is finally taking its place alongside the U.S. dollar as a new global reserve currency. This has been further enhanced by the euro's recent gains against the dollar. But what would happen to the U.S. economy if OPEC decided to use euros, instead of dollars, to price oil? Hazel Henderson explores the consequences.
uturists like me specialize in “what if” scenarios, outside the box thinking and trying to anticipate surprises. In even the best-laid human plans, events rarely unfold as predicted — even by experts.
Blind spots
Mostly, these surprises are the result of “blind spots”, or because experts use different models or specialized approaches and languages — making communication difficult.
As countries diversify into euros, the currency has taken its place alongside the dollar as the world’s other global reserve currency.
One such surprise scenario is rooted in the close relationship between oil, dollars, gold and Europe’s euro currency. Remember back in 1973, OPEC countries quadrupled the price of their oil and tied it to the U.S. dollar.
Over the years, this flooded the world with “petro-dollars”, which were recycled through banks as loans. The U.S. dollar reigned supreme as the world’s de facto reserve currency.
A history of dollars
Everyone wanted to own dollars, which were considered as good as gold (even though, since 1971, dollars cannot be redeemed for gold, after President Nixon shut the gold window).
Gold no longer backs the dollar — or any other currency. All currencies since 1973 are called “fiat” currencies — backed only by the faith markets have in a country’s government and its economic fundamentals.
Volatile markets
Central banks that used to keep gold bars in their vaults have sold much of their precious metal. Now, they try to “manage” their currencies by raising or lowering interest rates, buying and selling them in the open market and other techniques.
A strong euro makes for a more stable world — and takes the burden of the sole reserve currency status off the U.S. dollar.
Gold is still popular for jewelry and as a safe haven. It trades actively on the world’s commodity and futures exchanges, along with platinum, oil, hogs, coffee, sugar — and fiat currencies themselves.
These currency markets, oil and gold markets are very volatile — dependent on the expectations about the future of millions of their investors and speculators.
What drives the markets?
These markets reflect a collective speculation on the future of such items as Iraq, U.S. foreign policy, the Middle East, oil supplies, alternative energy sources and technologies, the rise of China, the expansion of the EU — and the weather.
They all drive today’s global financial markets, including the $1.5 trillion of daily currency trading.
Losing ground
In the past 12 months, the U.S. dollar has lost some 30% of its value against the European euro. The Bush Administration has played up the bright side. The cheaper dollar makes it easier for U.S. exporters to sell abroad.
Many believe that deeper reasons for the U.S. attack on Iraq were its decision in 1999 to require payments for its oil for food program in euros.
The United States needs to increase its exports because it has a whopping trade deficit (currently reading 5.2% of our GDP). Former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill dismissed this as “a meaningless concept.”
But global investors and currency speculators take it seriously — along with the bursting of the U.S. stock market bubble, accounting scandals and heavily indebted corporations and consumers.
No surprise
The list goes on, and includes the U.S. savings rate at almost 0%, the increasing budget deficits due to President Bush’s tax cuts and his build-up of military spending, the Iraq war and the new Bush doctrine of preemptive attacks on any country that might threaten our future national security.
In light of all that, global investors started unloading dollars and U.S. assets. No surprises here.
A new global reserve currency
But as countries that formerly held mostly U.S. dollars in their currency reserves begin to diversify into euros, the currency has taken its place alongside the dollar, as the world’s other global reserve currency.
Back in 1973, OPEC countries quadrupled the price of their oil and tied it to the U.S. dollar. The dollar reigned supreme as the world’s de facto reserve currency.
While current data are hard to come by, the euro now accounts for as much as 35% of global trade and reserve holdings. This new reality makes for a more stable world — and takes the unsustainable burden of the sole reserve currency status off the U.S. dollar.
Clearly, with its enormous, open-ended commitments in the global war on terrorism, the U.S. economy cannot at the same time, continue to absorb most of the world’s exports — and remain the locomotive of the world’s economic growth.
An oblivious administration?
This new situation seems a surprise to the Bush Administration. It is still keen on expanding its overseas commitments, re-building Iraq — and offering aid packages to Turkey, Pakistan and other countries whose support is sought. In the meantime, it has passed a $350 billion tax cut package in late May, 2003.
While Mr. Bush tells Americans to continue shopping, traveling and enjoying the American way of life, federal deficits grow, domestic programs are cut — and half of all U.S. states are engulfed in budget crises.
Dropping the other shoe
What happens if global investors continue pulling out of the United States — and the dollar keeps falling? Many market players expect it to fall another 20%. Other countries that have lost money in the dollar’s fall may continue buying more euros.
In the past 12 months, the U.S. dollar has lost some 30% of its value against the European euro.
The other shoe may drop, too. OPEC may decide to officially re-denominate their oil in euros (since most of the organization’s customers are in Europe anyway).
OPEC economists have been considering this “no-brainer” scenario for sound financial reasons — even though they feared U.S. wrath and retaliation.
War speculation
Indeed, many believe that a deeper reason for the U.S. attack on Iraq was its decision in 1999 to require payments for its oil for food program in euros.
The United States — heavily dependent on imported oil — benefits price-wise and in influencing markets through OPEC’s U.S. dollar pricing. Iraq’s dinar will also be replaced by dollars — if the United States has its way.
A major adjustment
Thwarting President Bush’s global dollar diplomacy and its designs on breaking OPEC’s oil pricing power provide additional reasons for OPEC to switch to payments in euros. This would mean that the United States would have to buy euros with dollars before it could buy OPEC oil.
The Bush Administration has played up the bright side. The cheaper dollar makes it easier for U.S. exporters to sell abroad.
The dollar would fall further — and the euro would rise. The U.S. economy would eventually have to adjust to $5-a-gallon gasoline (the average world price).
The bad news would be a deeper U.S. recession, SUV owners would suffer while Toyota and Honda would grab more market-share with their 50-60 mpg hybrid cars.
Good news?
The good news would be that U.S. exports would flourish and that Detroit would accelerate its own fuel-efficient car production. The solar and renewable energy technologies would be fully capitalized as a new sustainability sector of the U.S. economy, providing millions of new jobs.
And the Bush Administration would have to pull back from its over-commitment to the global war on “evil” — and shift its priorities to funding education, homeland security and federal grants to help states fund their new mandates.
Who's Afraid Of The Euro ?
Paul Krugman
I once attended a conference at which a senior Japanese official made an impassioned speech about the need to establish the yen as an international reserve currency. When my turn came, I explained that this was silly; even if the yen did become a reserve currency, it would make virtually no difference to Japan or to anyone else. At the end of the session, the moderator thanked me for my contribution--which, he said, emphasized once again the crucial importance of the yen's role as a reserve currency. I never figured out whether this was a case of the translator having trouble with my accent, or whether it was a polite way of telling me I had said something unacceptable. But I do know that people almost always attach far more importance to the issue of reserve currencies--the role of the dollar and its rivals in international trade and finance- -than the subject deserves.
And so it was inevitable that the coming of the euro --the common European currency that seems set to be introduced next year, and that may eventually challenge the dollar's dominance--would inspire irrational fear. Sure enough, a few weeks ago the intellectual fashion victims at one of those other business magazines ran an editorial entitled "The euro makes trade a new game." "Thanks to the dollar's role as reserve currency in world financial markets," they opined, "the U.S. has been able to do what no other country can-- consistently import more goods than it exports.... The U.S. owes some $5 trillion to dollar holders abroad, thanks to three decades of trade deficits." Gosh, what happens if those people switch to euros?
Well, not to worry. It just isn't true that America's ability to import more than it exports is unique. Since 1980 the U.S. current- account deficit (which includes services and investment income as well as goods) has averaged 1.5% of GDP. That's about the same as Britain's average, less than Canada's 2.2%, and nothing like Australia's 4.2%. These countries paid for their excess imports the same way we did: by selling foreigners stocks, bonds, real estate, and so on. The only difference is that because their deficits were bigger, their debts are also bigger as a share of GDP. Ours, it turns out, aren't that large--at least on a net basis. While it's true we owe foreigners about $5 trillion, they owe us more than $4 trillion; the difference is about $800 billion, or 10% of GDP.
But doesn't the dollar's special role give us some advantage? Most of the international role of the dollar comes from its use as a "unit of account"--the measuring stick for international business. When a Japanese refiner buys Kuwaiti oil, say, the contracts are in dollars. This is a testament to U.S. economic influence, but flattery aside, it's hard to see what we get out of it.
What about our ability to borrow in dollars, to sell dollar- denominated bonds to foreigners? Hey, other countries do that too. But our debts are in our own currency! So? We still pay interest on them. True, we could inflate away our foreign debt. But we won't--and if investors thought we would, they would demand higher interest rates.
Well, then, you may say, surely the international role of the dollar forces people out there to hold dollars for transaction purposes. Yes, but not so you'd notice. When Daewoo repays a dollar loan from Sanwa, it writes a check on its account with some international bank. True, that bank itself surely maintains an account in New York, backed in part by non-interest-bearing reserves held at the Fed. So the U.S. does in effect get a zero-interest loan out of the dollar's international role--but it probably amounts to only a few billion dollars, small change for an $8 trillion economy.
Where the U.S. does get a significant free ride is from the willingness of foreigners to accept our currency--actual bills. Foreigners hold more than $200 billion of American money. Guess what kind of business requires payments of large sums in cash, by people unconstrained by official restrictions on possession of foreign exchange? That's right: the dollar is the world's premier medium of illicit exchange. Every year the U.S. ships foreigners $15 billion in cash (about 0.2% of GDP), and gets real goods and services in return. Better not ask what kind.
So the threat to the U.S. from the rise of the euro is this: five years from now, when wise guys in Vladivostok make offers you can't refuse, the payoffs may be in 100- euro notes instead of $100 bills. The loss of such business might cost the U.S. economy as much as 0.1% of GDP. Somehow, I think we can live with that.
Heres a couple older articles about Turkey and the European Union and the support of Britain and especially the US. This should give some background for the story I am working on about the Turkish community in Germany and their reactions to the issue of Turkey and the EU.
Turkey could make the EU a much more powerful political player. Yet the support of the US is perhaps a double edged sword. Who wants that and who doesnt?
BBC News - Bush backs Turkey's EU efforts
BBC News - Thorny Issues for the EU
Bush Backs Turkey's EU Efforts
By Rob Watson
BBC Washington correspondent
US President George Bush has strongly backed Turkey's efforts to join the European Union.
He expressed his support during talks at the White House with the leader of Turkey's ruling party, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
In a sign of just how seriously the US is courting Turkey, Mr Erdogan was given time not just with President Bush, but with some of his most senior advisers as well.
With a smiling Mr Erdogan close by, the president said the US stood side-by-side with Turkey in its desire to become a member of the European Union.
It is a matter of great strategic importance to the Bush administration.
The US sees Turkey as a potential role model for other predominantly Muslim countries, and believes its embrace of secular democracy should be rewarded and encouraged by EU membership.
In diplomacy, though, there is often a catch.
The US also hopes that backing Turkey's efforts to join the EU will, in turn, lead to Ankara supporting possible military action against Iraq.
For his part, Mr Erdogan said joining the European Union was the most important modernisation project for his country since the creation of the Turkish state after the collapse of the Ottoman empire.
EU member countries are due to discuss enlargement of the union this weekend, though Turkey is not expected to be given a chance a join anything like as early as it would like to.
Thorny Issues for the EU
By Roger Hardy
BBC regional analyst
A sharp debate has erupted following the European Union's decision that Turkey will have to wait at least two more years before it is invited to start negotiations on membership.
Britain has been pushing for Turkish EU entry
Turkish Prime Minister Abdullah Gul has strongly criticised the decision - while the British Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, defended the EU's handling of Turkey's application to join.
Britain is one of the countries which has argued that paving the way for Turkish membership of the EU would send a positive signal to the Muslim world.
It would show that Europe was not anti-Muslim - and that a modern Muslim country is capable of being integrated with the West.
But as the mood in Copenhagen descends into mutual recrimination, it is clear that the Turkish question has become entangled with a whole host of issues that are not easy to reconcile.
The relationship between Islam and the West is only one of them.
Europe's concern
For the United States, the issue is essentially strategic. As it prepares for a possible war against Iraq, it sees Turkey as an invaluable ally.
The Europeans see that as only one issue among many - and resent the heavy pressure President Bush has brought to bear on them.
The summit showed that historic changes need imaginative leadership
They see integrating Turkey as a huge challenge, and one that cannot be rushed. For some EU members, the priority is human rights.
Others fear that Turkish membership - and the free movement of Turkish workers throughout Europe - would fuel anti-immigrant sentiment.
When tempers have cooled, it may become possible for Turkey and the EU to realise the historic significance of what has been achieved at Copenhagen.
This is that Europe is preparing to redefine itself in an important way, and that this gives Turkey a unique chance to complete its transition to democracy and modernity.
But the other message from this summit is that historic change takes time, and needs imaginative leadership on all sides.
This is an interesting Op-ed on "secularism" (laicism) from Fernando Savater a Spanish philosopher and writer. He develops "five theses" that deserve a close reading from those working on this issue.
An imperfect summary of the most relevant points could be:
Savater thinks that the Constitution should avoid any reference to the Christian roots of Europe (a very complex matter) and explains that a "secular" society tends to be clearly unitary and anti segregationist.
El País - Laicismo: cinco tesis
Laicismo: cinco tesis
Fernando Savater es catedrático de Filosofía de la Universidad Complutense de Madrid.
EL PAÍS | Opinión - 03-04-2004
El debate sobre la relación entre el laicismo y la sociedad democrática actual (en España y en Europa) viene ya siendo vivo en los últimos tiempos y probablemente cobrará nuevo vigor en los que se avecinan: dentro de nuestro país, por las decisiones políticas en varios campos de litigio que previsiblemente adoptará el próximo Gobierno; y en toda Europa, a causa de los acuerdos que exige la futura Constitución europea y por la amenaza de un terrorismo vinculado ideológicamente a determinada confesión religiosa. En cuestiones como ésta, en que la ceguera pasional lleva a muchos a tomar por enemistad diabólica con Dios el veto a ciertos sacristanes y demasiados inquisidores, conviene intentar clarificar los argumentos para dar precisión a lo que se plantea. A ello y nada más quisieran contribuir las cinco tesis siguientes, que no pretenden inaugurar mediterráneos, sino sólo ayudar a no meternos en los peores charcos.
1) Durante siglos, ha sido la tradición religiosa -institucionalizada en la iglesia oficial- la encargada de vertebrar moralmente las sociedades. Pero las democracias modernas basan sus acuerdos axiológicos en leyes y discursos legitimadores no directamente confesionales, es decir, discutibles y revocables, de aceptación en último caso voluntaria y humanamente acordada. Este marco institucional secular no excluye ni mucho menos persigue las creencias religiosas: al contrario, las protege a las unas frente a las otras. Porque la mayoría de las persecuciones religiosas han sucedido históricamente a causa de la enemistad intolerante de unas religiones contra las demás o contra los herejes. En la sociedad laica, cada iglesia debe tratar a las demás como ella misma quiere ser tratada... y no como piensa que las otras se merecen. Convertidos los dogmas en creencias particulares de los ciudadanos, pierden su obligatoriedad general pero ganan en cambio las garantías protectoras que brinda la Constitución democrática, igual para todos.
2) En la sociedad laica tienen acogida las creencias religiosas en cuanto derecho de quienes las asumen, pero no como deber que pueda imponerse a nadie. De modo que es necesaria una disposición secularizada y tolerante de la religión, incompatible con la visión integrista que tiende a convertir los dogmas propios en obligaciones sociales para otros o para todos. Lo mismo resulta válido para las demás formas de cultura comunitaria, aunque no sean estrictamente religiosas, tal como dice Tzvetan Todorov: "Pertenecer a una comunidad es, ciertamente, un derecho del individuo pero en modo alguno un deber; las comunidades son bienvenidas en el seno de la democracia, pero sólo a condición de que no engendren desigualdades e intolerancia" (Memoria del mal).
3) Las religiones pueden decretar para orientar a sus creyentes qué conductas son pecado, pero no están facultadas para establecer qué debe o no ser considerado legalmente delito. Y a la inversa: una conducta tipificada como delito por las leyes vigentes en la sociedad laica no puede ser justificada, ensalzada o promovida por argumentos religiosos de ningún tipo ni es atenuante para el delincuente la fe (buena o mala) que declara. De modo que si alguien apalea a su mujer para que le obedezca o apedrea al sodomita (lo mismo que si recomienda públicamente hacer tales cosas), da igual que los textos sagrados que invoca a fin de legitimar su conducta sean auténticos o apócrifos, estén bien o mal interpretados, etcétera...: en cualquier caso debe ser penalmente castigado. La legalidad establecida en la sociedad laica marca los límites socialmente aceptables dentro de los que debemos movernos todos los ciudadanos, sean cuales fueren nuestras creencias o nuestras incredulidades. Son las religiones quienes tienen que acomodarse a las leyes, nunca al revés.
4) En la escuela pública sólo puede resultar aceptable como enseñanza lo verificable (es decir, aquello que recibe el apoyo de la realidad científicamente contrastada en el momento actual) y lo civilmente establecido como válido para todos (los derechos fundamentales de la persona constitucionalmente protegidos), no lo inverificable que aceptan como auténtico ciertas almas piadosas o las obligaciones morales fundadas en algún credo particular. La formación catequística de los ciudadanos no tiene por qué ser obligación de ningún Estado laico, aunque naturalmente debe respetarse el derecho de cada confesión a predicar y enseñar su doctrina a quienes lo deseen. Eso sí, fuera del horario escolar. De lo contrario, debería atenderse también la petición que hace unos meses formularon medio en broma medio en serio un grupo de agnósticos: a saber, que en cada misa dominical se reservasen diez minutos para que un científico explicara a los fieles la teoría de la evolución, el Big Bang o la historia de la Inquisición, por poner algunos ejemplos.
5) Se ha discutido mucho la oportunidad de incluir alguna mención en el preámbulo de la venidera Constitución de Europa a las raíces cristianas de nuestra cultura. Dejando de lado la evidente cuestión de que ello podría entonces implicar la inclusión explícita de otras muchas raíces e influencias más o menos determinantes, dicha referencia plantearía interesantes paradojas. Porque la originalidad del cristianismo ha sido precisamente dar paso al vaciamiento secular de lo sagrado (el cristianismo como la religión para salir de las religiones, según ha explicado Marcel Gauchet), separando a Dios del César y a la fe de la legitimación estatal, es decir, ofreciendo cauce precisamente a la sociedad laica en la que hoy podemos ya vivir. De modo que si han de celebrarse las raíces cristianas de la Europa actual, deberíamos rendir homenaje a los antiguos cristianos que repudiaron los ídolos del Imperio y también a los agnósticos e incrédulos posteriores que combatieron al cristianismo convertido en nueva idolatría estatal. Quizá el asunto sea demasiado complicado para un simple preámbulo constitucional...
Coda y final: el combate por la sociedad laica no pretende sólo erradicar los pujos teocráticos de algunas confesiones religiosas, sino también los sectarismos identitarios de etnicismos, nacionalismos y cualquier otro que pretenda someter los derechos de la ciudadanía abstracta e igualitaria a un determinismo segregacionista. No es casualidad que en nuestras sociedades europeas deficientemente laicas (donde hay países que exigen determinada fe religiosa a sus reyes o privilegian los derechos de una iglesia frente a las demás) tenga Francia el Estado más consecuentemente laico y también el más unitario, tanto en su concepción de los servicios públicos como en la administración territorial. Por lo demás, la mejor conclusión teológica o ateológica que puede orientarnos sobre estos temas se la debo a Gonzalo Suárez: "Dios no existe, pero nos sueña. El Diablo tampoco existe, pero lo soñamos nosotros" (Acción-Ficción).
It is not about the Constitution. It is not exactly a "complot". But there certainly was some pressure exerted on behalf of the US on several European governments. The subject is REACH, a European Plan devised to ask chemical companies (instead of governments) to prove that their products are not toxic before putting them on the market. At stake are jobs, environment policies and US-EU relations.
The second story shows that it is a subject of strategic importance and that the US might have to adopt the European position in order not to duplicate costly testing procedure.
The New York Times - White House Undermined Chemical Tests, Report Says
Stratfor.com - Chemical Industry: Grasping the Implications of REACH
White House Undermined Chemical Tests, Report Says
By ELIZABETH BECKER
Published: April 2, 2004
ASHINGTON, April 1 - A report released by a House committee on Thursday describes how the Bush administration worked with the United States chemical industry to undermine a European plan that would require all manufacturers to test industrial chemicals for their effect on public health before they were sold in Europe.
The administration had said publicly that the proposal last year would threaten the $20 billion in chemicals that the United States exports to Europe each year because the cost of testing would be prohibitive. Five years in the making, the proposal, which was revised and is still under consideration, would shift the burden to prove the safety of chemicals onto manufacturers instead of governments.
Behind the scenes, the administration was working with the chemical industry to devise a plan to undermine the proposal, according to e-mail messages and documents released in the report.
The Bush administration said the proposal was unsound science and an abuse of regulatory authority, a similar accusation leveled against Europe for its demand that genetically modified food be labeled as such before it is marketed.
European officials said the testing plan was necessary because of an increase in health problems like allergies and male infertility. The costs of cleaning up damage from chemicals like asbestos is already in the billions of dollars, they said.
The office of the United States trade representative asked the industry to develop themes the administration could use to discourage the European Union from adopting the new testing program, according to an e-mail message dated April 4, 2003, and obtained by the House investigator.
Catherine Novelli, the assistant United States trade representative for Europe, was cited in the e-mail message, which read: "At the last meeting, Cathy had tasked the industries to come up with 'themes' for their concerns about the proposed legislation. The chemical industry had done a list of themes dealing with the E.U. process."
Other e-mail messages describe the role of Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, top Commerce Department officials and officials from the Environmental Protection Agency in lobbying European countries, singling out several countries, especially Sweden and Finland.
One e-mail message from the trade officials urged the chemical industry to "get to the Swedes and Finns and neutralize their environmental arguments."
Richard Mills, the spokesman for the United States trade representative, said Thursday that the administration estimated that "one million jobs are on the line - you're darned right we raised our concerns with the European Union."
"The regulations would not help the environment because they were unworkable," Mr. Mills said. "We want regulations that protect the environment and don't stifle U.S. jobs and economic growth."
The report, requested by Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California, says that American environmental groups and the general public were kept out of the administration's closed discussions and strategy sessions.
"We were frozen out," said Joseph Digangi of the Environmental Health Fund, an advocacy group cited in the report. "The administration went directly to the U.S. chemical industry and adopted their position whole cloth."
Anthony Gooch, the spokesman for the European Commission in the United States, said of the report: "There would seem to be an inordinate weight given to only one side of a complex argument. Significant concerns about the environment and public health seem to be totally absent from their policy."
The lobbying efforts of the United States appear to have succeeded. The European Union revised the proposal, known as Registration, Evaluation and Authorization of Chemicals, or Reach.
Five months after trade officials sent e-mail messages discussing how to persuade senior European officials to demand new cost-benefit analyses, France, Germany and Britain wrote to the president of the European Commission requesting a new assessment of the effects that the program would have on the industry.
The American Chemistry Council, a trade group, noted in its 2003 annual report that it had "rallied opposition to the draft proposal, including a major intervention by the U.S. government."
"The questions the U.S. government is raising about the global impact of Reach are perfectly sensible," said Greg Lebedev, the president and chief executive of the American Chemistry Council. "American companies have a stake in Europe as investors, manufacturers and suppliers."
Under current rules, about 99 percent of the total volume of chemicals sold on the markets have not been subjected to testing requirements.
One subject of the lobbying proposal was Margot Wallstrom, commissioner for the environment at the European Union. In an April e-mail message, an official of the trade representative said: "But who will take on Wallstrom - the answer is only other ministers or heads of state. The U.S.G. plans to send in our ambassadors to member states and commission to make our case."
Ms. Wallstrom said that the reform proposal was necessary because "there is no control whatsoever of the 400 million tons of chemicals sold in the European Union each year."
Mr. Powell sent several cables on the issue. In one, he warned that $8.8 billion in products were at risk of being banned or severely restricted under Europe's proposed system, a figure from a study by the chemistry council. His cables were sent to trading partners in Latin America and Asia as well as Europe to oppose the proposal.
The main chemical regulation in the United States is the 1976 Toxic Substance Control Act, which has been widely criticized for being weak and too deferential to industry. The vast majority of nonpesticide chemicals are not subject to any required screening before introduction here.
Chemical Industry: Grasping the Implications of REACH
From Strafor.com
Summary
Proposed European Commission regulations -- known as REACH -- would impose significant new requirements on the European and U.S. chemical industries. Lobbying by the U.S. chemical industry has prompted the Bush administration to make the proposal an economic and diplomatic issue. U.S. environmentalists and some senators are pushing to align U.S. chemical policy with REACH. If REACH and REACH-inspired policies are successful, the global chemicals sector might look to a new international testing standard to minimize costs.
Analysis
The European Commission adopted a proposal in October 2003 for a chemicals regulation policy known as REACH (Registration, Evaluation and Authorization of Chemicals). The proposed regulations would force Europe's chemical industry to conduct extensive health and environmental safety tests for chemicals produced in significant quantity for use in industry. The U.S.
chemicals industry, which would have to comply with Europe's REACH standards in order to export to any European Union country, and the Bush administration are lobbying against its passage, citing the high costs of compliance. Although REACH does not have any near-term prospects for approval -- a vote on the proposal is not expected until 2005 -- the proposed REACH legislation is already serving as a model and benchmark for environmentalists seeking changes to chemicals regulation in the United States.
If REACH is approved in Europe and a similar chemicals policy is passed in the United States, the U.S. chemical industry could face having to conduct dual testing and to absorb double costs associated with testing and compliance. The U.S. government and the chemical industry might choose to shape an international collaborative chemical testing policy to streamline the testing process and minimize additional costs.
Following the release of the European Commission's 2001 "White Paper on Strategy for Future Chemicals Policy," which laid out the ideas that led to REACH, environmentalists in Europe and the United States began touting the program as a way to protect public health against the potentially negative effects of tens of thousands of untested chemicals. The passage of REACH would mandate greater pre-market testing of all chemicals in commercial use, lead to phaseouts of those chemicals deemed most harmful to public health and the environment and lead to testing of chemicals sold to Europe from major trade partners, including the United States. U.S. environmentalists began campaigning to push lawmakers to adopt similar testing programs for chemicals in this country, citing the protection of human health and the environment as their chief concern.
Environmentalist arguments in favor of REACH-like regulations have been heard by at least one senator. According to Inside EPA, a Washington newsletter, Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., and several other congressmen will introduce legislation this year that would amend the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), the main U.S. chemical regulation statute, to resemble REACH.
TSCA gives the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) the authority to request testing data on certain chemicals from industry, but does not require testing of the majority of chemicals in commerce. The amendment under consideration would likely require industry to conduct testing on all chemicals produced in volumes greater than 1 ton, similar to the REACH program. It would also likely strengthen the EPA's role in banning chemicals deemed to pose a public health risk and place the burden of establishing a chemical's safety -- or potential for harm -- on industry rather than on the public or the EPA.
If REACH were approved in Europe, the U.S. chemical industry would face significant costs and challenges in complying with it to access the European market. The most obvious of these would be producing and managing the testing data for large numbers of chemical substances. The European Commission's impact assessment for REACH estimates that testing and registration costs would amount to 2.3 billion euros ($2.8 billion) over an 11-year period. The commission's estimate of the cost to downstream chemical users is roughly 2.8 to 4.0 billion euros ($3.4 to $4.8
billion) over the same period. This would bring the total cost to industry and its downstream customers at roughly 5.1 to 6.3 billion euros ($6.2 to $7.7 billion).
REACH requirements could pose other long-term challenges.
Adopting such a policy in the United States would fundamentally change how industry conducts business by codifying the precautionary principle in U.S. law. The precautionary principle provides a framework for forming environmental regulations based on "preventing harm" to the environment and/or human health.
Europe is more open to precaution-based guidelines than the United States: Europe instituted a defensive ban on U.S. hormone- treated beef because of uncertain health effects on humans, and is hesitant to approve genetically modified food. The U.S.
government places much more emphasis on cost-benefit analysis and risk assessment than on precaution.
Under a precaution-based chemical policy, industry would have to prove chemicals safe before putting them on the market, putting the onus of proving a product's safety on industry rather than the public. A REACH-like U.S. policy could make demands based on precaution -- such as phasing out certain chemicals and preventing the creation of new substances that are chemically similar to those already phased out -- much easier.
Such a policy could also mean the chemical industry would be open to legal claims -- like the pharmaceuticals industry currently faces -- based on "failure to warn" the public. Once extensive testing data are made available, gaps in the warning labels could become the basis for tort litigation.
The U.S. chemical industry is feeling the effects of rising natural gas prices for natural gas, the main source of energy and primary feedstock for many industrial chemicals. The industrial price of natural gas is approximately $5.50 per million BTUs, up from $3.78 per million in March 2002. If REACH is passed in Europe, the U.S. chemicals industry could be forced to look at cost-cutting measures, including increasing the speed with which it relocates production to other countries, possibly in Asia, that have lower gas prices.
The administration of U.S. President George W. Bush and the U.S.
chemical industry are lobbying EU member states to oppose REACH.
In March 2004, the U.S. government expanded its lobbying representatives to include U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, showing that the United States considers the REACH program a serious threat to industry. According to the Financial Times on March 29, Powell sent a cable to U.S. diplomats in the EU member states and 10 countries approved to join the European Union in May. Powell said, "The [U.S. government] continues to be concerned that the proposals will create a costly, disproportionately burdensome and complex regulatory system, which could prove difficult, if not unworkable, in its implementation. U.S. exports in most industrial sectors -- totaling tens of billions of dollars -- would be affected by the new policy."
Powell's intervention in the REACH debate signals the Bush administration's deep opposition to the proposed European regulations -- and presumably any similar program in the United States. It is rare to have a secretary of state intervene in a technical industry issue, particularly when the issue is still European. If John Kerry is elected in the fall, however, his administration could take a markedly different approach to the chemicals testing issue. Nevertheless, TSCA is becoming a battleground issue for chemicals policy; a large and -- sources say -- influential national environmental organization has said that amending TSCA to reflect REACH will be one of its key campaigns over the next year.
If the REACH proposal is passed in Europe -- and if TSCA is amended in the United States -- the U.S. government and the U.S.
chemical industry could spearhead discussion on the creation of an international policy to streamline the chemical testing process. There are several international chemical policy programs currently being discussed. Two are programs under U.N. auspices:
One seeks to meet the World Summit on Sustainable Development's
2002 agreement that by 2020 chemicals should be used and produced to minimize adverse human health and environmental effects; the second program would develop a classification and labeling system for chemicals. A third program, under the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, would focus on developing a testing and assessment program for chemicals produced in high volumes.
The United States would likely favor the OECD route because historically the United States has been more willing to join OECD talks than to participate in U.N.-sponsored programs. The United States prefers OECD because of the group's membership, which includes nations with large economies, and also because OECD does not have a permanent bureaucracy. It is also possible that U.S.
industry could choose to form a global chemicals policy -- not based on the precautionary principle -- to defuse the pressure from REACH in Europe in the absence of the passage of similar regulatory changes in the United States.