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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Thomas A Watson who wrote (136251)	4/7/2001 12:53:46 AM
From: Scumbria	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769667

From the UK's leading independent newspaper. guardian.co.uk Friday April 6, 2001 Appalling, provocative and depressing are all eminently suitable adjectives to describe George "Dubya" Bush's ill-considered forsaking of the crucial Kyoto climate change protocol. For without the participation of America, the world's biggest polluter, the accord looks shaky. But America's idiocy could now be Europe's gain if the EU and its constituent member states honour their own commitments and marshall other countries to ensure that they do not follow President Bush's lamentable lead. The hour of reckoning for Romano Prodi, the president of the European commission, and his able environment commissioner Margot Wallstrom, has now come. Foreign policy experts and EU insiders are always complaining that the union in political terms punches way below its weight - in fact the phrase has become something of a mantra for Chris Patten, the EU's external relations commissioner. The 300m-strong population of the eurozone - the 12 countries which have adopted the euro - outstrips that of the United States as does the area's share of world exports. But for a whole host of reasons, Washington is the only superpower on the block while the EU, thanks to conflicting views of what is should be, is simply not a power to be reckoned with. The fact that it manages the world's biggest humanitarian aid programme for example seems to count for nothing. But America's increasingly vocal unilateralism and gradual retreat from the world stage - be it in the Balkans, North Korean policy and now environmental policy - creates a power vacuum just waiting to be exploited by the EU. This would not be a question of the EU as a superpower finally coming of age. On the contrary it would simply be a question of Brussels passing its own credibility test. Where member states can agree on a common policy - be it on the environment or anything else - then surely it makes sense to act as one and start punching at the EU's mythical weight. Judging from the fuss President Chirac of France and chancellor Schroeder of Germany have made in the last week, global warming and the issue of how it should be tackled is one policy area where Europe stands more or less united. To her credit, the EU's Wallstrom is doing what she can to shore up the weakened Kyoto accord. A senior EU delegation wasted little time in racing to Washington to hear the bad news from the horse's mouth. And Mrs Wallstrom, a Swede, is now engaged on a whistlestop tour of Russia, Iran, China and Japan to see how the rest of the world can ratify Kyoto without the United States. That's a good start. But what is needed now are concrete results - the pact was signed in 1997 and yet not one single EU member state, including Britain, has ratified it in their national parliaments since. The challenge - to cut 1990 greenhouse gas emissions levels in major industrialised countries by an average 5.2% by 2012 - is ambitious but achievable. The fact is that Kyoto is not dead in the water if 55% of the original signatory countries press ahead and ratify the pact, provided that is that they also account for 55% of the world's greenhouse emissions. With Japan in the middle of a massive economic downturn, this then is the chance the EU has been waiting for. But to pass the test the EU cannot be seen to be hypocritical and its member states need to ratify Kyoto themselves as soon as possible. The shuttle diplomacy being practiced by the EU's Wallstrom must yield results. Firm commitments from other key players such as Russia need to be extracted and Brussels needs to play the honest and responsible broker. If it succeeds, spiralling apathy about what the EU is actually for might start to dissipate and Brussels would have strengthened its diplomatic hand immeasurably.

To: Thomas A Watson who wrote (136251)	4/7/2001 1:00:12 AM
From: Scumbria	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

guardian.co.uk Dear George Jonathan Freedland has managed to get his hands on a private letter from Tony Blair to George Bush. Find out what words of wisdom the PM had to offer ... Thursday April 5, 2001 Dear George, I know things are getting a bit prickly for you over there just now - your first big crisis and all that. Don't worry about it, the first one's always the hardest. After that you get lots of grey hair, bags under your eyes and the pundits start calling you "seasoned" and "experienced". With me it was the formula one affair and Bernie Ecclestone; with you it's a spy plane and Jiang Zemin. Same thing, really. Anyway, I'm writing to let you know that you've always got a friend in London (take a look at the map: it's right of America, across the blue bit and just after Ireland). You'll have noticed that us Brits have been the only government in the world to take sides in this spy-plane row between you and China. Japan, the Philippines and all the rest are either saying nothing or using diplomatic language to stay well out of it. Not us. We've weighed right in behind you. Did you hear Robin Cook's remarks? No, I don't suppose you did. Anyway, he's our foreign secretary - kind of like your secretary of state. And he condemned Jiang's demand that you apologise for crashing into one of China's planes. He said it was "unrealistic". Cookie also agreed with your call for Beijing to send the 24 US servicemen home as soon as possible - and for China to give back your plane. So, as you can see, we're doing the time-honoured British thing - staunchly serving as America's ultra-loyal ally, forever at your side. I don't care that, once again, I'll be on my own - just like I was when you and I bombed Iraq together in February. The Europeans will criticise me, calling me America's poodle, Uncle Sam's lapdog. But I don't care: being your number one ally is a prize worth all kinds of humiliation. Just one thing. It would make life a tad easier for me, and for America's less faithful friends, if this whole alliance thing felt more like a two-way street. That means Washington standing with us, the way you want us to stand with Washington. Kyoto is what I have in mind. Last week you said you'd tear up that global agreement on climate change. Now, I'm afraid that didn't go down too well here - in Britain or in Europe. People are in no mood to be your friend when you won't play ball with the rest of us. We need a little so we can give a little. You bring America back into the fold on Kyoto, listen to us on Russia or national missile defence, and then we'll happily be your partner in facing down China. But you can't have it both ways. If you insist on America First, you'll end up being America Alone. Anyway, I've banged on long enough. All the best, George. And remember: not too many late nights - unless you want to look as knackered as me! Yours, Tony