Limp handshakes and limp resolutions

Date: 27/03/03

In the wake of a distinctly chilly summit in Brussels, the EU's common foreign and security policy has been all but sunk in the English Channel, writes David Cronin

POLICE dozed in their vans as a milky sunshine embraced Brussels on a Friday morning in March.

Under normal circumstances the fine spring weather would have lifted spirits throughout this city. Yet the atmosphere among top EU politicians gathering for their summit was glacial.

A limp handshake the previous evening said it all. Jack Straw, the British foreign secretary, proffered his paw to Jacques Chirac. The French president took it briefly, nodded sternly, and sat down abruptly. Dominique de Villepin, Chirac's foreign minister, managed a smile bordering on the friendly but the tension remained palpable.

For once, leaders so effusive they would talk to a lamp-post were in no mood for dialogue. Costas Simitis, head of Greece's EU presidency, invited contributions from his counterparts. There was, say insiders, a profound reluctance to respond. What ensued was simply a series of statements, not a debate.

With some of the most vocal advocates and opponents of bombing Iraq in the room, it could easily have descended into a slanging match. However, the fact that a war that could pit the West against the Arab world had just begun meant there was a general resolve to keep things solemn and dignified.

As happened every time the subject was broached at EU level recently, the only way that the Union was going to come away with a unified stance on Iraq would be through taking a lowest common denominator approach.

The Greeks had prepared a text, which they wanted all 15 member states to endorse. But its very first sentence proved unpalatable for the French: "The European Council regrets that the opportunity offered to Iraq by the UN Security Council Resolution 1441 was not taken and that a peaceful resolution of the Iraqi crisis was not achieved."

Chirac might as well have taken out a karaoke machine and crooned his way through the old Edith Piaf song, Je Ne Regrette Rien. Paris was sticking to its line that Hans Blix's weapons inspections team could have verified the disarmament of Saddam Hussein's regime if they'd been given more time. There was no way Chirac would - implicitly or explicitly - take the rap for failure to settle the crisis without violence.

And so, a more anodyne statement was agreed: "With the beginning of the military conflict, we are faced with a new situation. Our hope is that the conflict will end with the minimum loss of human life and suffering." By the following morning, that hope was fizzling out.

A visibly drained Tony Blair was offering his condolences to the families of eight British servicemen and four Americans killed in a helicopter crash during an operation aimed at capturing the al-Faw peninsula in south-east Iraq. Rumours initially circulated that Chirac had declined to express sympathy over the loss. Blair, however, told a news conference that Chirac had, in fact, sent him a handwritten note of condolence.

Victory seems assured for the Amercian-Anglo alliance that is leading the charge on Baghdad, even if Saddam's elite Republican Guard continues to make a fight of it. However, the coalition's military might makes the Iraqi army - even if it does have access to weapons of mass destruction - appear like a group of boy scouts by comparison. So talk at the summit turned to what role the EU will play in a post-Saddam Iraq. At least, this was something people could agree on.

Or was it? Even though the summit's official communiqué says "we believe the UN must continue to play a central role during and after the current conflict" and that the Security Council should give the UN a "strong mandate" for rebuilding the country, Chirac attached his own conditions to supporting such a move.

"France would not accept a [Security Council] resolution that authorises military intervention and gives the United States and Britain administrative powers in Iraq," he declared.

His point-blank message appeared different from the one delivered by Blair a few hours earlier.

The British leader contended there is "a common view not just among Europeans but also with America" about the need for a new Security Council vote on "the post-Saddam authority in Iraq". According to Blair, this should be based on three tenets: respect for human rights, placing oil revenues in a trust fund "for the Iraqi people and no one else", and protection of Iraq's territorial integrity.

"Iraq will require immense reconstruction over time," he added. "It would be wrong if Europe does not take a strategic role in reconstruction."

Chirac, however, was non-committal when quizzed on whether France would be prepared to help foot the bill for damages inflicted by a war it opposes.

The Greek presidency strove nonetheless to keep things cordial despite the gaping rupture that has appeared in the entente cordiale. "We want the UN to have a major role in reconstruction," Foreign Minister George Papandreou told European Voice, shortly after Chirac's comments. "We would like to see a UN mandate and how to bring that about will be the important question in the next few weeks. What we have decided is very important. We have a framework in which we can work and I hope we can use this framework to move forward."

The backslapping and bonhomie with which summits are normally synonymous were in short supply. So too was humour. One of the few witty remarks came courtesy of Gerhard Schröder; the German chancellor proclaimed he didn't want to be a referee in the Blair-Chirac spat.

Pat Cox, the European Parliament President, used the summit to call for the avoidance of recriminations. His plea fell on deaf ears.

Belgium has called for a European defence summit in April. Controversially, Guy Verhofstadt's government wants this to involve France and Germany. The UK would be excluded. Denis MacShane, the British minister for Europe, poured scorn on the notion. Speaking in flawless French, MacShane said he did not wish to insult Belgium but could not fathom how serious discussions about defending this continent could take place without a British input.

The Union will move on from this war. It should welcome ten new members next year, if the referendums taking place in the candidate states are carried. It is equally conceivable that the European taxpayers will pick up most of the tab resulting from the devastation wrought by British and American missiles. That is what happened after the same two countries led the bombardment of Yugoslavia in 1999.

Still, there is no escaping the stark reality that the EU has been enfeebled since the beginning of this year.

One day the Union might well have a single foreign minister and speak with a harmonious voice on the world stage. It already has a variety of instruments for building a common foreign policy in its treaties. There is something missing, though. The trust needed to solidify that policy seems to have capsized somewhere in the English Channel. Can it be salvaged?

There was a frosty atmosphere at the recent European summit in Brussels on 21 March 2003, as Member States remained divided over the war against Iraq.