Face-saving exercise masks failure to settle questions posed by Resolution 1441

Date: 20/02/03

By Dana Spinant

Deep rifts remain within the EU and future member states over Iraq despite efforts to paper over the cracks at Monday's summit.

EU LEADERS saved face at their emergency summit with a joint statement on Iraq, but deep divisions persist as to how much time Baghdad should be given to comply with the UN disarmament obligations before force can be used.

Moreover, the 15 are still at odds on whether a second UN Security Council resolution is necessary - or politically desirable - before an attack on Iraq is launched.

But the biggest unanswered question after the Brussels summit is "not whether, but to what extent this crisis will damage the EU's common foreign and security policy, [which is] undoubtedly a victim of the Iraqi conflict", a European Commission official said.

After a month of embarrassing quarrels, the 15 papered over the cracks with a common position which stated that UN inspections could not go on indefinitely, but that force should be used only "as a last resort".

However, while apparently bringing together the UK, the strongest supporter of Washington's tough line on Iraq, with France and Germany - the countries which have been keenest to put a brake on what they see as a rush to war - the "common" statement conceals new rifts.

Crucially, member states are still split over when the deadline for Saddam Hussein to comply with the disarmament obligations or face war should be.

The UK and the United States see 28 February - the date when chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix presents his next report to the Security Council - as the "key date".

However, France, together with Germany and Belgium, considers that the Security Council should wait until 14 March, when Blix is scheduledto deliver another report, before deciding their next move.

Paris and London are also divided over whether there is a need for a second Security Council resolution authorising military strikes.

French President Jacques Chirac made it clear on Monday that he would not support a second resolution, declaring: "Resolution 1441 opens the way to the disarmament of Iraq through inspections. Therefore it is not necessary to change the strategy." By contrast, Jack Straw, the British foreign secretary, said a second UN resolution was "politically desirable", although "not necessary" as the UK believes resolution 1441 already permits military action.

Council officials admit they are also deeply worried that EU countries have put very different interpretations on the reports presented by Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, at the Security Council on 14 February.

An internal study by Javier Solana's policy unit on the Blix/ElBaradei reports, obtained by European Voice, acknowledges those differences but attempts to express a "European reading" of the report.

The study stresses that the "Blix part [is] clearly less negative this time. [The] focus [is] on progress, therefore [it is] unlikely that the report could have strengthened [the] camp wanting to finish inspections now." It also states that the Blix report "showed progress on the inspection track and did at least make it more difficult to argue that now is the time to stop inspections and go to war". The paper notes "clear indications that the US will try to move towards the next stage of 1441, but timing [is] left open".

Diplomats warn that "it is not clear how long the Europeans can preserve an already shaky common front over Iraq".

The position adopted at the Brussels summit glosses over these differences, but does not sort out the "underground cracks" in the Union's common foreign and security policy (CFSP), said one. "What was really at stake at the summit was not so much the detail of a common position on disarming Iraq but the credibility of the Union's common foreign and security policy", he added.

"It was a genuine crisis; this is also why it was, in the end, and despite persisting divergences, a turning point," a Swedish official said.

Chirac blamed those, including himself, who had "over-used" the word crisis. "What is important is not the short-term, but the vision, the perspective. And the Union continues," he said.

The French president admitted flaws in the CFSP but said he remained optimistic that in "three, five or ten years we will have a common foreign and security policy".

But the summit also demonstrated that the present EU countries are increasingly at odds over what they expect from the future member states and over how to treat them.

Chirac berated the ten countries which had expressed support for American policy on Iraq, and warned that they risked their accession to the EU being blocked. In contrast, in a letter sent to leaders of the future member states just hours after the summit, British premier Tony Blair congratulated them for "the leadership you have shown on these issues".

"I hope that we can remain in close touch in the weeks ahead," Blair added.

However, a sceptical French diplomat questioned Blair's act of courtesy: "Would he have said that if the candidates ganged up to support the Franco-German "no-war" position and not the British-American one?"

Deep rifts remain within the EU and future Member States over Iraq despite efforts to paper over the cracks at an emergency European Council Summit on 17 February 2003.