'Gang of Ten' joins 'Gang of Eight' to make really big gang. ;^)
New backing for U.S. splits Europe
iht.com
BRUSSELS Ten East European countries issued a strongly worded statement of support for the United States on Wednesday in a further sign of the increasingly polarized positions in Europe toward a possible war in Iraq.
The gesture highlighted divisions in a continent between staunchly pro-American allies in the former Soviet bloc and more skeptical allies, notably Germany and France, farther west.
"Our countries understand the dangers posed by tyranny and the special responsibility of democracies to defend our shared values," said a text obtained by The International Herald Tribune. "The trans-Atlantic community, of which we are a part, must stand together to face the threat posed by the nexus of terrorism and dictators with weapons of mass destruction."
The statement was significantly more firm toward Iraq than a letter last week from eight European countries that spoke about "shared" values across the Atlantic.
Despite the increasingly obvious cracks in European attitudes toward the Iraq situation, EU officials are continuing to seek consensus on the issue.
Officials said Wednesday that they would hold a special meeting on Iraq sometime after mid-February that could involve foreign ministers from the 15 EU countries as well as the 10 countries scheduled to join next year and other "countries from the region."
Greece, which holds the Union's rotating presidency, released a statement Wednesday demanding that Iraq "come into full and immediate compliance" with United Nations demands.
"The Iraqi authorities must, as an imperative, provide the inspectors, immediately, with all additional and complete information on questions raised by the international community, including the issues raised by the inspectors themselves in their report to the Security Council on Jan. 27," the statement said.
The signatories of Wednesday's statement included five countries set to join the European Union next year - Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia and Slovenia - and two countries scheduled to join in 2007, Bulgaria and Romania.
The other signatories were Albania, Croatia and Macedonia.
Drafted by the countries' foreign ministers, the statement said that if Iraq did not comply with the existing United Nations resolutions, "we are prepared to contribute to an international coalition to enforce its provisions and the disarmament of Iraq" - a pledge that the countries also made last November at a NATO summit.
The release of the statement was timed to coincide with U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell's speech Wednesday at the United Nations.
Ginte Damusis, Lithuanian ambassador to NATO, said her government as well as others in Eastern Europe had been approached by the United States on the issue of assistance in case of a conflict in Iraq.
"We have agreed to extend a standing diplomatic permit to use our airspace and our airport," Damusis said. "We have also indicated that we would consider participating in any post-conflict operations."
Her government, Damusis added, "has been thinking out loud about possibly contributing specialized units such as military medics to any operation."
In recent weeks, as rifts between European countries have widened, some officials in Brussels have chided the future Eastern European members of the Union for their pro-American stands.
Poland, for one, has been criticized for deciding to purchase American F-16 fighters instead of European-made fighter jets.
In an interview with a Brussels newspaper last week, Michel Barnier, a top French official at the European Commission, accused some future members of the Union of lacking a "European reflex."
"The newcomers have to understand that by joining the Union, they are not simply entering a supermarket," he said. "They are joining a political Union too."
Such statements underline the difficulties Europe will have in achieving its stated desire of a common foreign policy after the Union expands to 25 countries next year.
Analysts say Eastern Europeans have a special relationship with the United States partly because they are appreciative of the U.S. role in opposing the Soviet Union.
"For many people in region who hated the communist regime, there is an admiration for the United States," said Heather Grabbe, the director of research at the Center for European Reform in London. "They like the language of values that the U.S. uses - language that the Western Europeans are much more reluctant to use.
"They like hearing 'this far no further' and that certain things are 'intolerable,'" Grabbe added. "During the Cold War those kinds of certainties were the only thing you could actually rely on."
Grabbe said most Eastern European countries do not think "you have to choose between allegiance to the United States or the European Union. You should be able to do both." |
