Issue No. 163
20th
March 2003
I. Iraq attack divides Europe
Issue No. 163
20th
March 2003
I. Iraq attack divides Europe
The day after the American ultimatum to Saddam Hussein, the
Pope issued the strongest possible condemnation of the Anglo-American
attack. He instructed his official
spokesman, Dr. Joaquín Navarro-Valls, to issue the
following terse statement: “Those who
decide that all peaceful means that international law makes available are
exhausted assume a grave responsibility before God, their conscience and
history.” [Vatican Press Office, 18th March
2003] The
statement followed the Pope’s condemnation of the war in St. Peter’s Square on
16th March 2003, and the interview given by the head of the
Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Archbishop Renato Raffaele Martino,
who said, “War is a
crime against peace which cries for vengeance before God. Do not reply with a stone to the child who
asks for bread. They are preparing to
reply with thousands of bombs to a people that has been asking for bread for
the last 12 years.”
Chirac
condemns US-UK attack
Relations within the
EU plunged to new depths after Britain and the USA withdrew from the Security
Council process on Iraq and announced they were going to attack the country if
President Saddam Hussein did not go into exile. The president of the French Republic, Jacques Chirac, said that
the US-UK war was illegitimate and unilateralist. He said that the French position was supported by the majority of
opinion in the international community.
In a statement issued on Tuesday, Chirac denounced the ultimatum issued
by the American president the night before.
He said that the disarmament of Iraq was desirable, as was regime
change, but he attacked the unilateral decision to go to war without Security
Council approval. “Iraq does not today
represent an immediate threat of the sort which would justify an immediate
war,” he said. He said that the
decision to abandon the UN process was “grave” and that the inspections had
already been bearing fruit until they were stopped. Chirac defended himself against the charges levelled by London
and Washington, saying that he stood for “the primacy of law”: “France has acted in the name of the primacy
of law and according to her conception of the relationship between peoples and
nations.” He said that Bush’s ultimatum
“destroys the idea we have of international relations”. He went on, “Recent debates have clearly
shown that the Security Council was not ready, under the present circumstances,
to give approval for an early recourse to war.
To act without the legitimacy of the Security Council, and to give
priority to force over law, is to take a heavy responsibility.” [Le Figaro, 18th
March 2003]
The German
Chancellor has added his voice to those saying that the attack on Iraq is not
justified. He condemned the American
ultimatum in a television interview on Tuesday morning, saying that the threat
from Iraq did not justify war and the death of thousands of innocent men, women
and children which the war would cause.
“My response in this case was and is No,” he emphasised. Schröder also
drew attention to the fact that the US ultimatum to Saddam Hussein to go into
exile was incompatible with the UN Resolutions which Bush and Blair were using
to justify their aggression. “However
desirable it may be for the dictator to leave office, UNSC Resolution 1441
calls for the disarmament of Iraq.”
Opposition politicians in Germany, by contrast, supported the USA. Angela Merkel, the head of the Christian
Democrats, said that her party supported the ultimatum and the consequences
which it entailed. [Die Welt, 18th March
2003]
On the basis of Belgium’s
recently reaffirmed right to practise universal jurisdiction, seven Iraqi
families have lodged legal proceedings with the prosecutor in Brussels against
former President George H. W. Bush and General Colin Powell, the current
Secretary of State, for acts committed during the first Gulf War. The current
Vice-President, Dick Cheney, who was US Defence Secretary at the time, is also
a defendant, as is General Norman Schwarzkopf who directed “Desert Storm” in
1991. The suit is being supported by a
Belgian socialist deputy, Patrick Moriau.
The plaintiffs are “victims” or “members of the families of victims” of
the bombardment by American forces of a shelter in which 403 people died on the
night of 12th – 13th February 1991. Mr Moriau said, “We are convinced that these
same errors will be repeated and we want to show that all legal means will be
deployed to stop them.” The American
leaders thus join Ariel Sharon, Yasser Arafat, Fidel Castro and a whole host of
other world leaders on whose alleged crimes the Belgian courts are now going to
have to pronounce: the decision last
month to allow the case against Sharon to go ahead caused the then foreign
minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, to accuse Belgium of “a blood libel”
against the Jewish people. [Libération,
18th March 2003]
Latvia is the
latest East European country to announce its participation in “the operation to
disarm Iraq”. Other countries in
Eastern Europe have given varying degrees of support to the UK and US attacks,
including Macedonia, Latvia, Poland, Ukraine, Estonia, the Czech Republic,
Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and Lithuania. [RFE Newsline,
18th & 19th March 2003]
The Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, who supports the US-UK attack on Iraq, has expressed the fear that the chances of the European constitution being signed in Rome in December, as planned, are receding. Although Berlusconi, in a meeting with Gerhard Schröder, has said that he was very attached to the December deadline, because he wanted the new constitution to be signed in Rome, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, the chairman of the Convention which is drawing up the document, admitted on 14th March that the Constitution could probably not be presented to the European Council in Thessaloniki on 20th and 21st June, as planned. He claimed to see no problem in delaying the conclusion of his Convention’s work to the end of September; but the risk, in the eyes of the supporters of the constitution, is that any delay now will only snowball. Giscard thinks there should be a special summit devoted only to the constitution, to be held in October or November; but there might still be disagreements then, especially since the new member states are involved in the process too. Four member states (Sweden, Finland, Denmark and the United Kingdom) have joined six candidate countries (Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Lithuania and Latvia) in asking for a period of reflection between the end of the Convention’s work and the beginning of the Inter-governmental conference which will prepare the new treaty. The candidate states do not want the Constitution to be signed before they join on 1st May 2004, by which time the presidency will be held by Ireland.
So Berlusconi seems to have lost
grip of “his” ceremony in Rome this December.
But, according to commentators, his support for the British, Danish,
Portuguese and Spanish governments on the Iraq crisis has pushed suspicion
among EU states to their highest imaginable level. Under the circumstances created by the Iraq crisis, Paris and
Berlin are unlikely to accept that foreign policy should be decided by majority
vote. But just as disagreements and national reflexes of the European states
could not be greater, Giscard is still talking about the “profound unity” of
European peoples which he wants to “come to the surface”. [Libération, 18th March 2003]
The absence of
the British defence minister, Geoff “Buff” Hoon from a routine EU defence
ministers’ meeting in Greece on Friday and Saturday – he had more urgent
business to attend to in London – could not have been more symbolic. Nonetheless, the French defence minister,
Michèle Alliot-Marie, tried to pretend that all was well: “Our transient differences,” she said, “will
not impede our will to make progress with European defence.” The only problem with her optimistic statement
is that the backbone of European defence is Franco-British co-operation – the
one relationship which has soured more than any other within the EU. At the beginning of April, the EU is to take
over from Nato in the running of Macedonia, and supporters of European defence
are looking forward to this with glee.
(They seem less interested in the actual resolution of the crisis in
that country, so keen are they to have their own EU protectorate.) But apparently Macedonia is only the amuse-bouche
for other more important military dishes:
the EU wants to take over peacekeeping operations in Bosnia as
well. There seems, therefore, to be
little chance of the situation being resolved there either, now that
institutional interests are firmly driving the agenda. The EU already has a police mission in
Bosnia & Herzegovina composed of 510 policemen under the command of Javier
Solana; it is now looking forward to greater glory. Finally, the EU agreed to create a “rapid reaction force” at the
Helsinki summit at the end of 1999; nothing much seems to have happened since
then. [Libération, 15th March 2003]
Concern is even growing in the EU that enlargement could be now delayed. Chris Patten, the commissar for foreign relations, has said that the Iraq crisis was threatening the timetable for the admission of new member states. “We should not call into question the European vocation of the candidate states on the basis of their attitude in the Iraqi crisis,” he told the European Parliament. At the same time, Patten reminded the candidate countries that admission to the EU entailed certain duties, and these included refraining from actions which threatened the coherence of the EU’s external policy. He was referring, of course, to the very public support given by candidate countries to the US in the Iraq crisis. Some MEPs are also claiming that the European Parliament’s rights over the EU budget were violated when the amount to be spent on enlargement was decided by heads of state and government at the EU summit in Copenhagen. Markus Ferber of the CSU said that as long as the budgetary issues had not been approved the European Parliament could not vote on enlargement. This would make it almost impossible to sign the accession treaties on 16th April in Athens. Elmar Brok added grist to the mill when he said that the agreement reached at Copenhagen was “incompatible with EU law”. He said that the Parliament’s approval was decisive for all budgetary questions. He said that Parliament wanted neither to increase spending nor to delay enlargement, but that Parliament’s legal rights had to be accepted. Although the Commission is desperately trying to play down these remarks as institutional quibbles, they in fact hide very substantial concern about the open letters signed by the candidate countries, and about the effect of their admission to the EU on the EU as whole. It is even speculated that the Beneš decrees could be put on the agenda again when the European Parliament votes on enlargement one week before the planned signature of the accession treaties in Athens. Christian Democrats and other conservative MEPs are still unhappy about the continued existence of these decrees on the statute book of the Czech Republic. [Andreas Middel, Die Welt, 13th March 2003]
II. Other European News
Under cover of
the war on Iraq, the government of Serbia has declared a draconian state of
emergency following the assassination of the prime minister, Zoran Djindjić. Hundreds of people have been arrested; the
house of at least one suspect has been bulldozed down; and several national
newspapers and TV stations have been closed down. They include the national daily “Nacional”, which was shut down
on 18th March. The
distribution of the Montenegrin daily “Nin” was also prohibited in Serbia. A warning was issued to the national daily
“Vecernije List”. On 17th
March, the government closed down the TV station Mars, based in Valjevo, and
halted publication of the weekly newspaper “Identitet”. These measures follow the promulgation of an
emergency decree on the media, which states that all media must carry only
official releases authored by the government.
The decree states: “The Decree on special measures
during the state of emergency became effective
on March 12, 2003... The priority during the state of emergency is the
unobstructed work of the competent state bodies aimed at removing the reason
why the state of emergency was introduced to begin with. The media and all
means of imparting information have a special role, as their work is directed
to the public. With that in mind, we are warning all public media that, under
Item 9 of the Decree concerning the prohibition of broadcasting, they are
obligated to carry only the official releases of the competent state bodies...
Item 8 of the same Decree prohibits political, unionist or any other type of
action aimed at obstructing or preventing the work of the state of emergency, and the conveying of
information on such actions, by means of publishing releases, commentary or
statements shall be in violation of the Decree. The Ministry of Culture and
Broadcasting will, in cooperation with the Ministry of the Interior, undertake
the appropriate measures against media which fail to observe the above
mentioned provisions of the decree...” The prospect has also been raised that
political parties might now be banned as well, although the government has
stated that this will be done by the constitutional court and not by government
decree. [Beta News Agency,
18th March 2003] The main suspect in the
assassination, Milorad Luković, born Umenek and known as “Legija”, was the
man who helped Djindjić to seize power in the first place. The two men met secretly on 4th
October 2001, and Legija’s support was crucial to the success of the events of
5th October 2001 which overthrew Slobodan Milošević. Legija then also commanded the troops which
arrested the former Yugoslav president in April 2002. The Serbian deputy prime minister Zarko Korac has also admitted
that Legija’s men “occasionally assisted the state in the clashes in the Bujanovac
and Preševo areas (of Southern Serbia) and had contacts with the police.” [Beta News Agency, 14th
March 2003]
The
Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights has ruled that the leader of
the PKK, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, Abdullah Öçalan, did not get a fair
trial in Turkey in 1999. He was
sentenced to death four months after being arrested in Kenya. Öçalan is currently imprisoned on the prison
island of Imrali in the sea of Marmara, where he is the only prisoner: Turkey had promised not to carry out the
sentence pending this ruling by the ECHR; in the meantime, Turkey has abolished
the death penalty anyway, under pressure from the European Union. The ECHR has now ruled that the trial was
not fair, not least because one of the judges was a military judge from the
state security. Further, the defendant
was not able to see his lawyer until 10 days after his arrest, during which
time he made statements which were judged to be self-incriminating. The ECHR also ruled that the passing of the
death sentence, and forcing him to live under it for three months, was “inhuman
treatment”. Ankara has lodged an appeal
with the ECHR. [Rafaele Rivais, Le
Monde, 14th March 2003]
After the letter of the eight and the letter of the “Vilnius 10”, another small grouping has arrived on the European scene to trouble the previously stately and unanimous progress towards ever closer union. Seven small and medium-sized countries have held a pre-summit meeting to prepare a common position before this week’s euro-summit in Brussels: Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Portugal, Finland, Austria and Ireland sent their heads of government to Brussels on 19th March in order to strengthen the voice of the smaller countries within the EU. These countries feel that they are being squeezed out of the discussions on the European constitution which, they argue, is biased towards the larger member states. The main thing they are worried about is the decision to create the post of European president. Although there is nothing in any of the present drafts about a European president, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing has said he thinks the present system of a rotating presidency will become completely unworkable when the EU has 25 or 27 member states. The idea of appointing a European president is supported by Spain, Britain, Italy, Germany and France, but opposed by the smaller states, who are convinced that the post would have to go to the head of government of a big member state. The Luxembourg prime minister, who initiated the meeting, said, “Giscard must be clear that there are other voices in the EU than those of the big member states.” [Andreas Middel, Die Welt, 14th March 2003]
France’s budget
deficit for 2002 was 3.1% of GDP, according to the final figures released by
Eurostat in Luxembourg. The European
Commission is to initiate the excessive deficit procedure against Paris. During the course of the month of April, the
Commission will present a report on the French budget to the ECOFIN council of
finance ministers. They would have
until June to decide what to do about it.
Such procedures have already been opened against Germany and
Portugal. [Handelsblatt, 17th March 2003]
More economic
gloom has spread as the European Commission responded to high oil prices and
general economic slowdown by cutting even further its already anaemic
predictions for growth in the EU. In
the euro zone, growth is slated to be about 1.8% next year; the war in Iraq is
likely to reduce this even further. The
commissar responsible, Pedro Solbes, said that even this figure was
“optimistic” and indicated that he thought growth might be nearer 1.25%. Many expect the European Central Bank to
respond to hostilities in the Gulf by cutting interest rates, but the commissar
acknowledged that monetary policy was severely complicated by the drastic rise
in oil prices. [Handelsblatt, 17th March 2003] Commission officials are
naturally already talking about making the stability pact “more flexible”. The Commission thinks that if the Iraq war
is short and if oil prices rise by only 50% then the effect on the euro zone
economy will be limited; if the war drags on and the oil price doubles, then
growth would shrink to 0.3%. [Der Standard, 18th March
2003]
The African
state of Ghana is flooded with food products from the EU while local produces
are driven out of business by the artificially cheap imports. It is obvious that no African state, nor any
Eastern European state, can compete with the massive subsidies of the CAP; so
in the last decade three factories making tomato paste in Ghana have closed
down. The last one closed after the IMF
demanded that it be privatised as part of a “structural adjustment programme”
and now Ghana is the biggest importer of tomato concentrate from Europe,
importing some 10,000 tonnes a year.
100 workers were put out of a job when it closed, and of course the
local farmers have suffered massively.
Many of them have abandoned their farms and are now washing car windows
on the streets of the capital, Accra.
As the prices of seeds and fertilizers rises inexorably, the price of
subsidised foreign tomatoes goes ever downwards. In other words, Ghanaian peasants who earn €1 per day cannot
compete with products from the EU, which spends €370 million a year on
exporting tomatoes alone. As is well
known, every European family spends €26 per week on CAP subsidies. Cows, indeed, in the EU have more money
spent on them than people do in Africa.
[Giampaolo Cadalanu, La Repubblica, 17th March 2003]
Published by The European Foundation, 62, Brompton
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