Just found this: "For a time, rhetoric replaced diplomacy as the primary instrument for taking positions, making criticisms, and shaping coalitions," according to the report.
US-European relations in crisis: report
Fri Mar 19, 1:31 PM ET Add Politics - AFP to My Yahoo!
WASHINGTON (AFP) - US-European relations have hit a crisis point over Iraq (news - web sites), according to a report by 26 European and US personalities.
"The transatlantic relationship is under greater strain today than at any point in at least a generation," said the report led by former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger and former Treasury secretary Lawrence Summers.
"Many Europeans assume malign intent on the part of the United states. Many Americans resent European behavior and dismiss European perception of today's threats," it added.
"The war in Iraq brought these strains to the point of crisis," argue the authors in the report sponsored by New York's Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).
The report was released as transatlantic relations hit another low when the Spanish prime minister-elect Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, a Socialist, on Wednesday called the US-led occupation of Iraq a "fiasco" and vowed to remove Spanish troops from Iraq.
Spain's conservative government, a staunch US ally that sent 1,300 Spanish troops to Iraq, was ousted last Sunday in national elections.
France and Germany were the United States' most vocal opponents last year when President George W. Bush (news - web sites) sought the United Nations (news - web sites)' backing to invade Iraq.
"France and Germany organized resistance to the US in the UN security council -- alongside Russia, historically NATO (news - web sites)'s chief adversary," the report said.
"The Bush administration, in turn, sought to separate these states from other members of the alliance and the European Union (news - web sites)," the report added.
"For a time, rhetoric replaced diplomacy as the primary instrument for taking positions, making criticisms, and shaping coalitions," according to the report.
Others signing the report include Italian senator Giuliano Amato; French Foreign Relations Institute chief Thierry de Montbrial; former deputy treasury secretary Stuart Eizenstat; former US ambassador to Paris Felix Rohatyn; German journalist Josef Joffe; and Brent Scowcroft, a former adviser to presidents Gerald Ford and George Bush, senior.
story.news.yahoo.com |
