Issue No. 164
3rd
April 2003
I.
European reactions to the war
As arguments start to break out in Washington about whom to blame for the apparent failure of the war in Iraq – senior Republican Party officials have been to see President Bush in an attempt to wean him off listening to advice from Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz – the famous “coalition of the willing” of which the Bush administration has boasted seems to be coming under stress. Although President Bush was unable to name a single one of the countries in the coalition at a recent press conference, other US officials have variously put the number of countries participating or supporting the British and American troops in Iraq at 45, 49 or 50. Several European countries which initially did support the war are now backtracking, Italy being the prime example. Although Silvio Berlusconi, the prime minister of Italy, signed the initial Letter of the Eight which ignited the row over “old” and “new Europe”, he has been making himself scarce ever since. Berlusconi hopes to become president of the Republic and he knows how unpopular the war is in Italy. Denmark, which signed up to giving military assistance to the coalition, was forced to reduce its already tiny contingent under pressure from the opposition. The Netherlands, who gave broad support to the “coalition”, have explicitly ruled out any military support. José-Maria Aznár, who has gone further than any other European state (apart from Britain) and has promised 9,000 Spanish troops for humanitarian work, has also come under immense pressure at home. In Poland, photographs showing Polish soldiers posing next to American GIs have caused a strong public reaction against the war; there have been large anti-war demonstrations in Warsaw. Only 20% of Poles support their country’s participation in the war. The Polish Defence Minister, Jerzy Szmajdzinski, said that the timing of the attack had been “poorly chosen”. He said, “The way this operation is progressing is not a surprise because in our opinion, of the General Staff and mine as well, the operation started very late or almost too late as far as climatic conditions are concerned.” The deputy chief of the Polish General Staff, General Lech Konopka, said that the air raids carried out on Iraq had not brought about the expected results, and that reconnaissance was poor. [Radio interview, 31st March 2003; RFE Newsline, 1st April 2003] The Czech Republic’s new president, Václav Klaus, delivered a rebuke to the US Secretary of State when he stated that the Czech Republic was not part of the “coalition”, as the US government claims. [Hospodarske Noviny, 21st March 2003] Klaus, who had attacked the war only a few days after his election, said that he disagreed with the British and American view that it was right to remove an undemocratic regime by force. He said that the view that this could be done seemed to him to be “from another universe”. [Mlada Fronta Dnes, 25th March 2003] Croatia was for a while considered part of the coalition because it signed the “Letter of the Vilnius 10”, but its president, Stijepan Mesić, attacked the war as illegal once hostilities commenced. He said that Croatia would never support the war without a UN resolution and insisted that this position had not changed. [Broadcast to the nation on Croatian TV, 21st March 2003; Foreign Press Bureau, Zagreb] Slovenia was also one of the countries which signed the Letter of the Ten; its prime minister has, however, made it absolutely clear that his country is not part of the coalition against Iraq. [Office of the prime minister, Statement, 27th March 2003; http://www.gov.si/pv/index_eng.php] Same thing in Ukraine, where the US ambassador said that Ukraine had consented to its name being used in a speech President Bush gave at the MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida, on 26th March. [http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/03/20030326-4.html] But the spokesman for the Ukrainian foreign ministry, Mrakiyan Lubkivsky, said on 1st April that his ministry had never asked the US to consider Ukraine a member of the “anti-Iraq coalition”. [Radio Free Europe Newsline, 1st April 2003] Even the Romanian president, Ion Iliescu, who has hitherto been one of the most outspoken supporters of the UK and the US, has said that he was not ready to follow the US under all conditions. In Bulgaria, the Socialist opposition has launched a campaign against the war which has led to expressions of different opinions by the country’s president and prime minister. Romania and Bulgaria certainly have one eye on their admission to the EU in 2007, but they are also under pressure from their public opinions. The majority in both countries in favour of an attack on Iraq has disappeared since hostilities commenced. Now, 86% of Romanians and 71% of Bulgarians are opposed to the war and want it to stop immediately. The Hungarian government, which supports the US, has refused to close its embassy in Baghdad, as the Americans have requested, and the Hungarian Foreign Minister has said that “Hungary is not at war with Iraq.” [Mirel Bran, Le Monde, 29th March 2003] In the Romanian port of Constanţa, where US forces are now based, feelings are also running high. Locals have been quoted saying they are terrified of this “murderous” war and of terrorist attacks in the city. The mayor of the town, Diunu Traian, said that he initially welcomed the American troops, but that he was shocked when he learned that the troops had signed a contract with a local construction company to build a road between the base and some military depots, without planning permission. When Romania agreed to all the US requests for bases, the State Department, on 10th March, upgraded Romania to the status of “functioning market economy” in return, in contradiction to a similar report by the European Commission published at the end of 2002. Bucharest has also asked for the restitution of $1.7 billion in debt which Iraq had contracted with Romania in the 1980s under Ceauşescu. Romania has also sent nearly 300 soldiers specialised in chemical weapons to the Gulf. [Mirel Bran, Le Monde, 2nd April 2003]
Schröder trims
In his first public statements since the beginning of the war, the German
Chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, has said that the EU’s Common Foreign and
Security Policy had been thrown into a deep crisis by the Iraq war. He emphasised that it was essential that the
United Kingdom, the USA’s closest ally, have a determining role in CFSP. Schröder hinted that he thought CFSP should
counterbalance the USA when he said, “It would be fatal if this integrated
Europe, in the fact of new imbalances in the world, did not assume its
responsibilities.” These, he said, were
in conflict prevention and peace keeping, like the operation on Macedonia. But he said that any integrated EU policy
would have to “serve” Nato and the transatlantic relationship. He said that without Britain this would be
impossible. [Die
Welt, 3rd April 2003] By
contrast, the (Social Democrat) president of Germany, Johannes
Rau, has delivered a scathing attack on George Bush and US policy. He attacked Bush’s invocation of God in
justification of his attack on Iraq. “I
don’t believe that one people can get a message from God to free another
people,” he said. “The Bible was not a gun
or a war directed at non-Christians, and the holy book never made mention of
the crusades the U.S. president used to tout.” Rau went on, “There are situations in
which war is inevitable, but this was not the case in Iraq.” He attacked the US for dismissing the
findings of the weapons inspectors that Iraq was co-operating, and also criticised
the US from changing the war aim from disarmament to regime change. “This contradictory
situation only exposes an intentional desire to wage a military aggression
against the Arab country. The U.S. Administration turned a blind eye to
the Arab-Israeli conflict, an epidemic problem that needs an urgent solution,
while preferring to launch war against Iraq.”
[Interview, N-TV, 31st
March 2003]
German opposition party comes under strain
A civil war has broken out in the ranks of the German opposition party,
the Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union. The party leader, Angela Merkel, has been
outspoken in her support for the US position, which has contrasted sharply with
the popular anti-war position taken by Chancellor Schröder. Now, leading figures in the CDU have started
to express their disagreement with the party leader. The prime minister of North-Rhine Westphalia, Jürgen Rüttgers,
emphasised that Mrs Merkel had never expressed unconditional support for the USA;
he added that, while it was important for the CDU to support the USA, the
relationship with France was also key.
The Secretary-General of the CDU, Laurenz
Meyer, emphasised that it would be wrong to reproach the CDU leadership for “a
strictly pro-American attitude”. The
former Foreign Policy spokesman of the CDU, Karl Lamers, attacked Merkel for
being uncritically pro-American. Lamers
said this was no way to exert political influence and he described it as
“nonsense” to say that the Americans were threatened by Iraq. He added that the US wanted to create “a
unipolar hegemonial world order.” The
more radical CSU deputy, Peter Gauweiler, known for making the occasional
Eurosceptic remark, demanded a complete change in his party’s stance on Iraq. “This is not our war,” he said. He continued to say that his party’s
relationship with the USA should not be “an uncritical Yes and Amen.” He said CDU and CSU voters were horrified at
the incompetence of the American administration, and that the party faithful
demanded an immediate condemnation of the war.
[Arnhe Delfs, Die Welt,
1st April 2003] Even the party’s most formidable politician, the Bavarian prime minister,
Edmund Stoiber, has distanced himself from the hapless Merkel. Speaking on a visit to China, Stoiber said,
“The Allies will never be in a position to turn the military process into
something politically and economically positive.” He said that he regretted “most deeply” the fact that Iraq was
being attacked without UN approval.
Stoiber’s statements have been contradictory in the past: sometimes he has attacked the US for going
it alone, without the UN, and on other occasions he has attacked Chancellor
Schröder for not supporting the US and for splitting Europe. [Andreas
Lorenz, Der Spiegel, 31st March 2003] However, the former Chancellor,
Helmut Kohl, has leapt into the breach to defend Angela Merkel, to express
support for the USA, and to attack Gerhard Schröder as an anti-American. He criticised the government sharply for
damaging relations with the USA but said that the German-American friendship
would never be fully destroyed, even if it would now need an entire parliament
to rebuild it. He attacked the
“unspeakable anti-Americanism of the Left” and said that Johannes Rau, Gerhard
Schröder and Joschka Fischer were the most prominent representatives of this
anti-Americanism. [Nikolaus Blome, Stephan Haselberger, Die Welt,
3rd April 2003]
One quarter of
French people side with Iraq …
A poll has shown
that 78% of French people oppose the attack on Iraq, including 53% who oppose
it “totally”. 17% approve, with 5%
don’t knows. Also against are 84% of
people under 35, 90% of business executives, 83% of families with income above
2,000 euros a month; 83% of Parisians;
87% of people with university degrees (as against 61% of people without
degrees); 85% of people who vote for the extreme left; 76% of those who vote for the main
right-wing parties. Only 48% of those
who vote for the extreme right are against, even though Jean-Marie Le Pen was
one of the first French politicians to condemn the Anglo-American
aggression. 52% of those questioned
said they would still oppose the war if Iraq used chemical or biological
weapons against the invading forces.
65% say the US is responsible for the conflict, against only 12% who
blame Iraq. 34% say they feel more on
the side of the UK and US, while 25% say they support Iraq (30% for the under
35s). 43% say that a UK-US victory is
“far from obvious”, against 33% who say it is “probable” and 21%
“certain”. [Gérard Courtois, Le Monde, 1st April
2003]
… but French
government tries to mend fences
The French prime minister has tried to pour oil on these troubled waters. Jean-Pierre Raffarin has called for “vigilance against all manifestations of anti-Americanism” which, he said, were “unacceptable”. According to sources, the French government has been very careful in its public statements since the hostilities commenced, not wishing to be seen to treat both combatants as morally equal. Raffarin said, “We side with democracy. Just because we are against the war does not mean that we wish the victory of dictatorship against democracy.” He added, “The Americans are not our enemies.” [Jean-Baptiste de Montvalon, Le Monde, 2nd April 2003]
The same message was communicated indirectly by President Chirac at a lunch given for senators from his party. The president of the Senate, Christian Poncelet, said afterwards that the president had made it clear that “there is no doubt that the Americans are our allies and our friends”. “For Jacques Chirac,” others said, “the transatlantic bond cannot be questioned, if even France defends its vision of a multipolar world, in which the allies of the USA are partners and not vassals.” The president had said that he thought the Americans and the French were “in the same boat”. Chirac also said that, while he was concerned for the instability of the region, he was convinced that the USA would win the war.
Alain
Juppé, for his part, the former prime minister who is considered by many to be
the eminence grise of the Raffarin government, said that the differences of
opinion between France and America were very deep. “France and a large part of the international community consider
that we must make progress towards setting up a true world governance.” While some pro-American members of the
presidential majority in France want Jacques Chirac and the government to go
further in clearing up the “confusions” which remain over the French position,
commentators say that the indignant reactions of the Communist Party and the
National Front to these latest statements show that Paris is finally coming
back into the American fold. [Judith Waintraub, Le Figaro, 3rd
April 2003]
France and the
United Kingdom have said that they want to “work closely together” on Iraq when
the war is over and that they are both committed to giving the UN an important
role after the conflict. Tony Blair and
Jacques Chirac spoke on the telephone on 29th March. London is evidently trying to heal the
wounds created by the rift over the UN Security Council vote. On 21st March, Jacques Chirac
made it clear that he would not allow “the British and American belligerents”
to take over for themselves the administration of Iraq after the war. [Claire Tréan, Le Monde, 1st April 2003]
In an interview
with Die Welt am Sonntag, the UN chief weapons inspector, Hans Blix, has
attacked the US administration, saying that it was interested only in obtaining
a UN resolution legitimising an attack on Iraq. He said that the Americans had not been interested in listening
to objective information in the run-up to the war. He said that the information given to him by the US secret
services was “mediocre”. “Of all the
sites to which we were sent for inspection, only three of them had arms, and in
none of those were there any illegal weapons of mass destruction. Now it will be interesting to see whether
the Americans inspect sites about which they told us nothing. I had the impression that they had decided
to attack and that our work irritated them.”
Blix added that the British and the Americans were now trying to recruit
British and American members of his team to help them discover weapons. He said that the discovery of gas masks was
no proof that Iraq has chemical weapons.
Blix said that Iraqi cooperation had been slow at first but that it had
become active by the end of January. On
the day of the US ultimatum to Iraq, a letter had arrived clarifying some of
the last outstanding issues with the inspectors. [Welt am
Sonntag, 30th March 2003]
The Russian defence minister, Sergei Ivanov,
told Komsomolskaya Pravda on 31st March that the
Anglo-American attack on Iraq was not proceeding without “mishaps and
miscalculations”. He said that Iraq had
successfully challenged the coalition both militarily and in terms of the
propaganda war. Ivanov added, however,
that Iraq would not be able to resist if the US resorted to carpet-bombing, the
political cost of which would be massive.
Ivanov said that if the US continued to minimise civilian casualties,
then the operation could be problematic, since “Iraq still has a formidable
army that has not yet begun to fight.”
Commission condemns the killing of civilians
The European
Commission has said that the killing by US soldiers of seven women and children
was a “horrible and tragic incident”.
The spokesman of the Commission added that “It is not an isolated
incident; too many civilians have
already lost their lives in this war.
This shows that however advanced the technology is, there is no war
without the loss of innocent lives.” [Libération, 1st April 2003]
II. Other European News
The Association of Sudeten Germans has
decided to take the battle to the enemy by opening a permanent office in
Prague, whose opening ceremony was attended by some 150 people including the
Vice President of the Czech Senate, Jan Ruml.
The Chairman of the Sudetendeutsche Landsmannschaft, the German MEP, Bernd
Posselt, referred to the office as “an embassy” and the office’s very existence
has created a sensation. The Czech
media and some politicians have called it “a propaganda machine” designed as a
provocation to the Czechs but Posselt said that it was best if the outstanding
issues between the Czech Republic and the Sudeten Germans were discussed. Posselt recently voted in the European
parliament against the accession of the Czech Republic – which puts him in the
odd position of being an “objective ally” of those Eurosceptic politicians like
the European Foundation’s own Jan Zahradil, who has strongly denounced the
opening of the Sudeten Germans’ Prague office. [Hans-Jörg
Schmidt, Die Welt, 26th March 2003]
German business confidence falls
further
Economic experts in German banks and big
companies expect growth to be 0.7% in 2003, according to the quarterly survey
by Reuters. This is based on the
assumption that the Iraq war will not last longer than six or eight weeks. Inflation is expected to be 1.4%. The results of this latest survey are even
more pessimistic than those of the last poll in January, when growth was
predicted at 0.9%. The experts agree
that the German economy is very nearly in recession and that they do not expect
any turnaround until the summer.
Unemployment, currently heading towards 5 million, is not expected to
start falling until 2004, and even then only slowly. Unemployment in Germany currently stands at 10.5%. [Handelsblatt, 1st April 2003]
In a short
ceremony on 31st March, the EU formally took over from Nato the task
of maintaining the military force in Macedonia. Now the EU has a little colony all of its own – just what it
always wanted. This is, of course, all
part of the EU’s “Common Foreign and Security Policy” of which there has been
precious little sign in recent weeks. The EU mission has the appropriate name,
“Concordia” and is provisionally slated to last six months. But we can be confident that it will last
indefinitely, since the original deployment two years ago was supposed to last
only 30 days. The largest contingent
among the 350 soldiers is French but 12 other EU states are involved. [Katja Riddersbusch, Die Welt, 31st March 2003]
Published by The European Foundation, 62, Brompton
Road, London SW3 1BL
Tel. + 44 20 7590 9901, fax 7590 9975, euro.foundation@e-f.org.uk