Cold war II

Don’t mention the war!

Those of you focusing your attention exclusively on Jay Garner’s Iraq, or Nicanor Duarte’s Paraguay, might be surprised to learn that relations between two of Europe’s heavyweights, France and Britain, are in need of some serious counselling.

Everyone knows about the Atlantic frost between Washington and Paris: freedom fries; Colin Powell’s threats of punishment; Chirac’s uncompromising Gaullism.

But this week, a State of Britain poll conducted by Mori and the Financial Times showed that 55% of Britons consider France to be their nation’s “least reliable ally”. In second place, with 25% of the vote, is “All other countries”. No other single nation got into double figures.

The two countries, never the best of friends, have come to symbolise the chasm within Europe over how to view the world. If Robert Kagan were writing this Diary, he might say that Britain was full of Martians, while Frenchmen appeared to live on a moon made of Rocquefort cheese orbiting around Venus.

In crude terms (the only terms the Diary knows), Britain leads the pro-war camp, while France leads the anti-war camp (and thinks it leads Europe).

But can a continent bicker about Iraq forever?

Maybe. British Prime Minister Tony Blair warned this week that there is “a difference of vision” between the two countries. “Some want a so-called multi-polar world where you have different centres of power, and I believe will quickly develop into rival centres of power; and others believe, and this is my notion, that we need one polar power which encompasses a strategic partnership between Europe and America,” he told the Financial Times.

Blair accuses Chirac of trying to set Europe up “in opposition to America”. Such a move would be “dangerous and destabilising,” he says. Want to see America behaving unilaterally, Jacques? Then go and set up your “rival polar power” to the US, see what happens. Good wine, mon ami, does not guarantee your immunity from the “axis of evil”.

Documents found in the Iraqi foreign ministry appear to show collusion between French diplomats and Saddam’s mukhabarat (intelligence service). France stands accused of aiding the cover-up of Saddam’s human rights abuses, and using any means necessary to maintain veto control over Iraq’s oil. Citing a warm letter of thanks from Saddam to Chirac, in which the Iraqi dictator praised his buddy’s efforts to lift UN sanctions, Britain’s conservative Daily Telegraph accuses its French neighbours of engaging in an “entente cordiale with the Ba’athist dictatorship”. In other words: no wonder they didn’t want the war.

France, symbolic leader of Don Rumsfeld’s “Old Europe”, seems determined to go its own way on this one. If anyone doubted Chirac’s desire to be the new De Gaulle, his efforts this week to allegedly confront and undermine Nato should put an end to that.

As Blair warned against institutional opposition to America, Chirac and company went about forging exactly that. On Tuesday, four of Old Europe’s anti-war brigade (France, Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg) held a defiant defence summit in Brussels. They emerged promising the creation of a joint military planning system by next year, a headquarters for European military operations (a “nuclear collective capability”) in Brussels, a rapid reaction force, and a European Security and Defence Union.

A rival to Nato?

Mais non! insists Belgian prime minister Guy Verhofstadt. “This summit is not directed against Nato or the Americans,” he told Le Soir.

Then why have to say so, the Diary wonders?

Gerhard Schröder weighed in with a complaint that there is “very little Europe” in Nato (described by Colin Powell as the “glue” that holds the transatlantic relationship together). “That,” says Schröder, “is why we want a change.” Chirac, for his part, said “There is a multipolar world next to the US, with Europe and China. We need a strong EU to have balance.”

Sounds like the cold war has begun all over again.

Britain, you’ll be surprised to learn, is not happy. Europe minister Denis MacShane said “the idea of a European defence based on Belgium without England” is “particularly serious”. Blair sounded perplexed: “It’s a meeting between four member states; I think there are fifteen in the EU. We won’t accept, and neither will the rest of Europe accept anything that either undermines Nato or conflicts with the basic principles of European defence we’ve set out.”

Is European unity coming apart at the seams?

If Chirac and friends are forging a new European Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), then how come none of their community partners were invited? Not even Javier Solana, EU foreign policy chief, was present at this love-in. Is this core group of (arguably) ‘anti-American’ and definitely ‘anti-war’ European nations intent on creating a two-or-more-tiered variable geometry for an EU military?

And how will that work exactly?

The truth is, Europe could hardly be more split on matters of defence. In the current climate, the idea of France and Britain fighting on the same side seems laughable.

Until Europeans become willing to spend 4% of their GDP on defence, so is the idea that America will feel threatened by Luxembourg.

To cover up or not

Meanwhile, on a domestic level, France continues to find itself in l’eau chaux over its relationship with its Muslim community.

Two weeks ago, the Diary focused on interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy’s backfiring efforts to create a moderate Islamic council of France.

Now, the issue of headscarves has once more reared its head in the national debate.

Sarkozy insisted this weekend that Muslim women remove their headscarves for identity card photographs. His demands were met with boos and jeers from 10,000 Muslims in the Union of Islamic Organisations in France (UIOF).

Few issues are proving more contentious or symbolic in contemporary France.

Over the last decade, the issue of whether girls should be allowed to wear headscarves in schools has divided the country. French law does not say schoolgirls are explicitly banned from wearing headscarves. However, in the words of the BBC, “a 1994 instruction from the Education Minister says the “ostentatious display of religious allegiance” in state educational institutions should be prevented.”

This week, two more schools complained about girls wearing headscarves, and Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin came out in favour of a ban.

Others voiced their opposition to the wearing of headscarves. Francois Hollande, leader of the Socialist Party, said headscarves were “out of place in schools”. MP Jacques Myard of Chirac’s party, claimed there was “a big difference between discreetly wearing a cross, a hand of Fatima or Star of David around your neck” and a headscarf, which he described as “incompatible with the neutrality of the school and the French Republic”.

A 1905 French law separated church and state. Teachers have even walked out on strike, so strong is the opposition to headscarves. Education minister Luc Ferry says the 1905 legislation cannot deal with the changes occurring in French society, including “the rise in racism and anti-Semitism”. He has pledged to introduce a new law next year to “reassert secular values in state schools”.

Sarkozy has been defended by the moderate Muslim Co-ordinating Committee who says it is “shocked by the disgraceful behaviour of those who dared to defy the republic”.

Rector of the Paris mosque Dalil Boubakeur (the man set to head the new Muslim Council) told French Muslims that they had to “live with the times”.

(Source: BBC Monitoring)

A girl’s ex-best friend?

Another casualty of the Iraq war, it emerged this week, is diamonds.

That’s right, despite the best efforts of P. Diddy, sparklers have hit a downturn in sales. It all began, said Stephen Lussier of the Diamond Trading Company (the marketing arm of De Beers – which controls 60% of the market) when “the bullets started flying”.

Until the US, British and Australian troops dashed towards the Euphrates, diamonds were enjoying a bumper year. With fewer people willing to risk holidays in terrorist havens, diamond sales have rocketed since 9/11. The war in Iraq has stopped all that.

Did the Pentagon not factor this tragedy into their considerations?

Actually, Washington has got its sights set firmly on the diamond industry.

President Bush signed new legislation on Friday that aims to curb the illegal trade in “blood diamonds”.

“Conflict diamonds,” he said, “have been used by rebel groups in Africa to finance their atrocities committed on civilian populations and their insurrections against internationally recognised governments.”

The global trade in diamonds is thought to be worth about $7 billion. “Blood” or “conflict” diamonds comprise about 3% of the market.

The US has signed up to the Kimberley process which certifies each and every diamond, charting its course from mine to jewellery store.

According to the BBC, Americans consume two-thirds of the world’s supply of diamonds (the Financial Times simply says that the US is “the biggest consumer of diamonds”, but, as the World Health Organisation would submit, Americans tend to be the “biggest” consumers of anything).

Some fifty-plus nations have signed up to Kimberley. They will meet next week in Johannesburg.

Comparing kingliness

Finally, while the US struggles to maintain order in Iraq, a German-led expedition (totally unrelated to the war, of course) has discovered what it thinks is the ancient city of Uruk.

Uruk is where the name Iraq comes from. It is also the burial place of King Gilgamesh – subject of the world’s oldest ‘book’ The Epic of Gilgamesh, written 2,500 years before the birth of Christ.

In fact, the archaeologists think they may have found the actual lost tomb of the King, described in the epic.

The city is said to include a sophisticated system of canals. Jorg Fassbinder, who is heading the expedition, said it was “like a Venice in the desert”.

Take note, Jay Garner.

(To read more click here)

Quotes of the week

“The universal hope of human beings in every culture.”
President Bush on freedom.

“A banker is a banker, and an analyst is an analyst. The two shall never cross.”
Richard Grasso, chairman of the New York Stock Exchange. Ten of Wall Street’s biggest firms were fined $1.4 billion in penalties this week, settling charges they had peddled biased investment advice in favour of a few clients, and at the expense of the others.

“He is assuming rational behaviour on the part of the left-wing party members and the unions.”
Norbert Walter, chief economist at Deutsche Bank, on German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder.

“If he had spent only half that money on the people, they would have loved him.”
Ibrahim Raouf Idrisi, head of Iraq’s Committee for Free Prisoners, on the hundreds of millions of dollars Saddam spent on jailing, torturing and killing his enemies. (Quoted in the New York Times)

“A vocal minority clamouring to transform Iraq in Iran’s image will not be permitted to do so. We will not allow the Iraqi people’s democratic transition to be hijacked...by those who might wish to install another form of dictatorship.”
US Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld.

“It’s a veritable chromatic coup d’etat.”
Alfonso Pecoraro Scanio, President of the Italian Green Party, complaining about the national flag that is flying outside Prime Minister Berlusconi’s Rome office. The flag, it is claimed, has a deeper green, a more ruby red and a more ivory-like white, than is usual.

Contact the Diary Editor: dominic.hilton@openDemocracy.net