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Strategies & Market Trends : MARKET INDEX TECHNICAL ANALYSIS - MITA -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: J.T. who wrote (15891)	1/28/2003 12:11:34 AM
From: J.T.	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 19219

Germany's chancellor Gerhard Schroder has been snubbing his nose at the US for some time... What is his real MO??? Read closely. Germany: Breaking up the alliance Copyright © 2003 The International Herald Tribune \| www.iht.com William Safire NYT Friday, January 24, 2003 WASHINGTON Germany's chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, is on a roll. The first victory was re-election last year, snatched from the jaws of defeat by his last-minute embrace of anti-American pacifism. That energized the Green Party and empowered Germany's new isolationism. In its wake came a second Schröder triumph, his recent spin-around of Jacques Chirac of France. Chirac had made a deal with the United States last fall: Washington agreed to postpone the invasion of Iraq until after UN inspectors had been jerked around long enough to satisfy the world street's opinion, and in return France would not demand a second UN resolution before allied forces overthrew Saddam. As D-Day approached, France sent its aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle to the coming war zone. Chirac made plain that, although a minor and reluctant participant in the attack, France was not to be frozen out of postwar oil arrangements. Then Schröder, reliant on his militantly anti-war Greens, made Chirac an offer he could not refuse: to permanently assert French-German dominance over the 23 other nations of Continental Europe. In a stunning power play in Brussels, Germany and France moved to change the practice of having a rotating presidency of the European Council, which now gives smaller nations influence, to a system with a long-term president. This French-German czar of the European Union would dominate a toothless president of the European Commission, chosen by the European Parliament. Little guys of Europe hollered bloody murder this week, but they will find it hard to resist the French-German steamroller. France then had to repay Schröder by double-crossing the United States at the United Nations. That explains France's startling threat to veto a new UN resolution approving invasion of Iraq - a second resolution that France had promised Colin Powell would not be needed. The German design is apparently to saw off the Atlantic part of the Atlantic alliance, separating Britain and the United States from a federal Europe dominated by Germany and France, with France destined to become the junior partner. No wonder the British press catches a whiff of the old Berlin imperiousness. No wonder the idle French threat to veto a resolution - which Chirac knows will not be offered - reminds populous and powerful nations like India and Japan of the inequity of mid-sized France having the veto power, and of the need to prevent Germany from getting it. The chancellor's Pyrrhic victories are part of the backdrop to the existential crisis that the Security Council is bringing on itself. The Iraq issue is not war vs. peace. It is collective security vs. every nation for itself. Copyright © 2003 The International Herald Tribun