More...
I think this is going to get REAL ugly if France doesn't back off.
http://www.iht.com/articles/90687.htm
Blair-Chirac quarrel rages on at EU summit
Elaine Sciolino/NYT The New York Times
Saturday, March 22, 2003
BRUSSELS The battle within Europe sparked by the Iraq crisis raged on as President Jacques Chirac of France vowed Friday to oppose a British idea for a Security Council resolution that would give the United States and Britain the right to govern Iraq.
And on the second and final day of a summit meeting that brought together the 15 leaders of the European Union, Britain continued its verbal attack against France, while Germany announced that it would join France and Belgium - the countries most opposed to the war - in a summit meeting on how to strengthen Europe's military capability.
No one could remember a European summit meeting more tense - and surreal. The war with Iraq has exploded the myth of European unity and it intruded at every turn.
As the European leaders proclaimed their commitment to open their energy markets, create jobs, institute a single air-traffic control zone and make Europe the most competitive economy in the world, dozens of television screens mounted throughout the room carried live news of the war.
The disconnect underscored an important point: Europe may be able to come together on issues affecting its members' economies, but it is more divided than ever on how to defend itself and project power around the world.
The sharpest fissure was between Britain and France. Rejecting an idea floated by Prime Minister Tony Blair earlier in the day for a resolution to give international authority to a new administration in Iraq, Chirac said at a news conference, "This idea of a resolution seems to me to be a way of authorizing military intervention after the fact, and so is not, from my point of view, fitting in the current situation."
He added, "France will not accept a resolution tending to legitimize the military intervention" and giving the Americans and the British "powers over the administration of Iraq."
Blair, in an earlier news conference here, said that there was general agreement between Europe and the United States that "it is important" to have a new Security Council resolution, not just to address the potential humanitarian crisis in Iraq but also to authorize what he called the "post-Saddam civil authority" in Iraq. The Bush administration has indicated that it plans to bypass the United Nations and administer Iraq itself.
Chirac's uncompromising stance is certain to deepen the sentiment in both the United States and Britain that the French president sabotaged the campaign in the United Nations for a resolution that would have endorsed the American-led war in Iraq. It was also puzzling. There is no resolution for either the governance or the reconstruction of Iraq on the table, and he could have easily dodged reporters' questions by saying that such planning was hypothetical while war raged.
Chirac said that the United Nations was the only body that could take responsibility for rebuilding Iraq, underscoring that he is willing to consider some sort of resolution, but not one that would seem to legitimize the war or give the United States and Britain exceptional powers. "Whatever the results of the military operation," Chirac said, Iraq "must be rebuilt, and for that there is just one forum - the United Nations."
The leaders wrapped up their summit meeting with a 36-page declaration that pledged to forge creative strategies to combat the global economic slowdown. Still, not all of the insults could be held back. Britain, which has committed 45,000 troops to the U.S.-led Iraqi campaign, continued to hurl accusations that France had sabotaged an effort to win international approval of the war at the United Nations.
Britain's foreign secretary, Jack Straw, refused to back off his verbal assault on France, which drew an angry protest from his French counterpart. "I stand by the words I have used," Straw told British reporters. "I don't regret the fact that we have argued."
Asked about a proposal by France, Germany and Belgium to hold their own defense summit meeting, Denis McShane, Britain's senior official on Europe, told French reporters in flawless French, "The idea of a European defense based on Belgium and without England - I wonder how serious this could be." Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder of Germany told reporters that the summit meeting would help accelerate the process of forging a common European security policy. But he suggested that all 15 European Union leaders and the 10 additional countries that are poised to join the organization would be invited, saying, "We should not in any way exclude anyone from European defense."
Blair refused to be drawn into the intra-European fight, but he did not try to hide the divisions either, telling reporters that there was "no point dwelling" on the differences between France and Britain.
He said that Chirac had sent him a personal note expressing condolences for the death of eight British soldiers killed Thursday night in a helicopter crash in Kuwait.
Without directly criticizing the plan by three member countries to meet on defense, he stressed the importance for Europe as a whole to reach agreement on a common foreign and defense policy and lamented the fact that the Iraq crisis had exposed the "fault line" in Europe's strategic relationship with the United States.