Atlantic pact hits stormy water

Date: 17/10/1996

WHEN European and American leaders launched a new rapprochement effort nearly a year ago to combat what they saw as the erosion of

EU-US ties, they warned that walls were going up on each side of the Atlantic and must be broken down before it was too late.

The fears they expressed about increasing isolationism in Europe and America which prompted the New Transatlantic Agenda were perhaps overstated. After all, two-way trade and investment is up, and there has been more transatlantic traffic this year than for quite some time.

But some of that traffic has not been exactly what the two sides' leaders hoped for, more closely resembling cannon balls than cooperation pacts.

The EU and the US, both vying for the titles of superpower and the world's biggest trading bloc, have crossed swords often in recent months. They have competed for influence in the Balkans and the Middle East and on Japanese economic policy, fought over business blockades to Cuba, wrestled over power-sharing within NATO and disagreed over the top job at the United Nations.

Usually, such spats stop short of insults. But this year, Washington's Helms-Burton legislation punishing foreigners with dealings in Cuba provoked barbs and slurs not normally uttered by EU leaders.

The Union's decision to fight back and to take the US to arbitration over the issue was particularly remarkable in light of the fact that numerous American leaders had asked the Union not to retaliate, to give them more time.

The reaction was also atypical of the club-like atmosphere which normally prevails in international politics, where principles often take a back seat to “maintaining friendly relations” or mutually beneficial back-room deals.

It was also a rare moment of complete agreement among the 15 EU governments, driven by frustration at Washington's disregard for their interests.

It was probably not a coincidence that Union foreign ministers' decision to fight back over Helms-Burton came on the same day that President Bill Clinton was hosting an emergency summit between the Israeli and Palestinian leaders to try to get the faltering Middle East peace process back on track - and not inviting the EU.

When State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns commented that Middle East summits were more successful when participation was restricted, the insult was too much to bear for the Europeans, who felt it was their money which had helped create the new Palestine.

Perhaps the darkest day in a long period of mutual criticism came last spring, when US troubleshooter Richard Holbrooke, on one of his countless rescue missions to Bosnia, accused Europe of sleeping on the job. He even threatened to go to Cyprus next to solve problems in a future EU member state.

But Burns' statement hinted at something even Europeans acknowledge in private - that as long as the EU fails to resolve difficulties on its own turf, it can hardly hope to help solve the world's more 'important' problems.

Strangely enough, however, the Union's back-seat role could become a tool for closer EU-US cooperation. A good example of this occurred two weeks ago. Even as Clinton played host to Benjamin Netanyahu and Yasser Arafat at the White House, EU foreign ministers made a significant contribution of their own from Luxembourg.

In their joint statement criticising Israel for failing to meet its obligations to keep the peace, and clearly declaring that Jerusalem belonged as much to Palestinians as to Israelis - the strongest words ever from the Union - they did something for Clinton he could not do for himself.

“The Americans told us they were privately furious at Israel's lack of engagement, but they were unable to come out in public with that,” said an EU diplomat, who revealed that a week earlier, in the margins of a UN assembly in New York, the Union and the US agreed on the line to take in the Middle East, and American officials gave an implicit go-ahead “to shake Netanyahu up”.

But, as the diplomat added wryly, the EU and US do not see eye to eye like that all the time.

This year, Europeans could be forgiven for thinking that the US administration is blind - and deaf.

Their arguments as to whether the Helms-Burton legislation is justified or not have been on different planes altogether. Washington has not heard EU warnings that it is hurting Europeans by preventing them from investing in Cuba. European governments have turned a deaf ear to US pleas for initiatives to undermine Fidel Castro's regime.

In fact, Helms-Burton is not significant in economic terms. There is far less at stake in Cuba than in current transatlantic trade spats over semiconductors, information technology, mutual recognition agreements (MRAs), hormone-treated beef and bananas.

But its political symbolism is far greater. Europeans feel that the transatlantic agreement launched with such ceremony last year is a hollow one if Washington can still fire salvos like Helms-Burton and the D'Amato law outlawing investment in Iran and Libya's oil sectors.

“You cannot on the one hand say we are good friends for everything and it is business as usual, and then have Helms-Burton and D'Amato. You cannot deal with someone who is disregarding our own rights,” said an EU official.

Despite his reputation as a pro-European, US Under-secretary of Commerce Stuart Eizenstat sees it differently.

On one of his recent missions to seek European cooperation over Helms-Burton, he evoked American contributions to Europe over 50 years: billions of dollars and thousands of soldiers' lives.

“I do not think it is asking too much, given what we do with Europe and for Europe - always at the beck and call, never turning down an important request for security and democracy and freedom here - to ask Europe to help us, in a much more modest way, to promote democracy in the hemisphere we live in, in the only repressive regime left in that hemisphere,” he said.

Eizenstat even went so far as to chide Europe for not helping the US in other arenas, such as in defending Taiwan from China's military threats. “We were the ones, as usual, who were called upon to act,” he said. “We acted unilaterally there, too, and it would have been nice to have some company.”

European listeners were incensed, and Eizenstat went home empty-handed.

The Union wants an updated relationship, one of equals. The Transatlantic Agenda was designed to create just that, with 'cooperation' in all fields from foreign policy to school vaccinations.

Last month, Irish Foreign Minister Dick Spring insisted in a speech to the European Parliament that the programme was working.

“We can point to progress on a number of foreign policy issues,” he said, citing former Yugoslavia, central and eastern Europe, the Middle East and the Great Lakes region of Africa.

But just last week, Europeans effectively rejected an American idea to create a standing force of up to 10,000 troops to handle crises when they arise in Africa.

Despite all their trials and tribulations, however, most Euro-peans and Americans still think the relationship is worth salvaging. Some of their efforts are even looking remarkably like re-runs of last autumn's initiatives.

Henry Kissinger and Brent Scowcroft, a former secretary of state and a former national security advisor, are pushing for a transatlantic trade zone as a way to firm up the political links they see fading between the two long-standing allies.

Warning that Washington has a growing tendency to act without consulting its allies and that EU governments will begin to assert their Union identity simply by opposing US initiatives, they say the two need a shared interest.

The only problem with their proposed solution is that it failed last year. When the notion of a transatlantic free trade area (TAFTA) was broached in 1995, it was rejected out of hand by France and southern EU member states, and came in for plenty of criticism in the US as well.

But with Helms-Burton again threatening to put the good ship EU-US on the rocks, the two Americans have brought the TAFTA idea out of mothballs.

It is doubtful, however, that the result this year will be any better.