JULY 2006

French left presidential hopeful opposes core EU plan

UPDATE:
EU says Israel "totally wrong" on ceasefire message

28.07.2006 - 09:57 CET | By Lucia Kubosova
The Finnish presidency of the EU has denied giving Israel a green light to continue its operations in Lebanon and suggested that Jerusalem's interpretation of Wednesday's international crisis talks in Rome was "totally wrong."

The strong message from Finnish foreign minister Erkki Tuomioja came after Israel's justice minister Haim Ramon said that divisions among world leaders meeting in Rome could be seen as "permission" for Israel to continue its offensive.

Mr Tuomioja met Israel's top officials on Thursday (27 July) and is due to travel to Beirut on Friday. His protest against Jerusalem's misinterpretation of the Rome conference conclusions was echoed by Berlin and Rome.

Italian prime minister Romano Prodi pointed out that "The position expressed by the conference cannot be interpreted as an authorisation."

And German foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier insisted the Rome emergency talks had signalled "just the opposite," as all its participants "wanted to see an end to the fighting as swiftly as possible."

Wednesday's conference was attended by several European foreign ministers, US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice and UN secretary general Kofi Annan, as well as Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt but not Syria or Iran.

Under US pressure, the top-level meeting abstained from calling for an immediate ceasefire in the region - but has endorsed the idea of a peacekeeping force "under a UN mandate."

Blair to lobby Bush on UN resolution
The sensitive issue of whether to explicitly call for a ceasefire in the conflict in which at least 424 Lebanese and 52 Israelis have been killed so far will also dominate Friday's (28 July) meeting between the British and American leaders in Washington.

(editorJB...WE MAY QUESTION THIS...)UK prime minister Tony Blair is planning to press US president George W. Bush to support "as a matter of urgency" a ceasefire in Lebanon as part of a UN security council resolution to be voted on next week, according to UK daily, The Guardian.

Britain and the US are isolated in their refusal to urge the two parties to immediately stop fighting, arguing the region needs a "sustainable" solution in a position viewed by some European diplomats as buying time for Israel to pound Hezbollah.

London and Washington have been circulating a text of the draft resolution which suggests a two-phased procedure to restore peace in the region.

The first phase would involve a ceasefire deal between Israel and Lebanon with a small international force deployed on the border while Israeli troops withdraw from the country.

Thee second stage would see a larger force of up to 20,000 UN-mandated troops disarming Lebanese militias - mainly Hezbollah - and helping the Lebanese army to take control of the country's southern border.

Peace plan competition
Meanwhile, Paris - currently holding the presidency of the UN security council - has prepared a competing resolution of its own.

The French draft calls for an "immediate halt to the violence" and "a handover of prisoners to a third party enjoying the trust of the two belligerents."(editor JB : which "prisoners"?)

It also foresees the deployment of international troops in support of the Lebanese army and a buffer zone on the Isreal-Lebanon border, press reports say.

EU foreign ministers will meet for an extraordinary session in Brussels on Tuesday (1 August) to debate the bloc's position on the Middle East crisis.

© 2006 EUobserver, All rights reserved

23.06.2006 - 10:11 CET | By Mark Beunderman
Segolene Royal, the leading socialist candidate for the job of French president, has rejected her centre-right opponent's idea to create a stronger EU core of the bloc's six biggest states.

Ms Royal has recently emerged as a popular socialist candidate to take on the centre right's star candidate, Nicolas Sarkozy, in the French presidential elections in May next year.
Some opinion polls indicate that Ms Royal and Mr Sarkozy could head for a neck-and-neck race, with the campaign so far primarily focusing on both candidates' tough-on-crime statements.

But in an interview with Le Monde on Thursday (22 June), Ms Royal also said she is opposed to the key idea of Mr Sarkozy that the six largest EU states should take the lead in the union's affairs through closer co-operation.

"I distrust the domination of some [member states] by the others. We have done much harm, by certain declarations, to so-called small countries," she indicated.

"Look at the damage caused by Jacques Chirac in the countries of the east," she went on to say referring to the current French president's famous 2003 remark that new EU member states had "missed a good opportunity to shut up" on Iraq.

The socialist frontrunner also indicated that the EU needs a new treaty despite her country voting down the EU constitution in a popular referendum last year.

"We will need a new treaty and above all a social treaty," she said.

"The current Europe only has an economic leg. Without that second, social leg, nothing is possible," she said, signalling that she believes any new treaty should include stronger social protection.

Mrs Royal's differences with Mr Sarkozy on the constitution question are less clear than on the EU-six issue.

Mr Sarkozy has proposed a step-by-step implementation of the most important elements of the current text of the EU constitution, but also believes the constitution will "not enter into force in its current form."

The two candidates appear to agree however on the need for tax harmonisation in the EU.

Ms Royal indicated "Still more than any technical rules, we need a true political will to construct what I call the Europe by evidence, which combines stimulating competition, social and fiscal harmonisation, and shared practices on industrial champions, research programmes and business and social experiences."

Belgium to probe US monitoring of international money transfers

27.06.2006 - 09:58 CET | By Helena Spongenberg
Belgian prime minister Guy Verhofstadt has ordered a probe into whether a Brussels-based banking consortium broke the law when it provided US anti-terror authorities with confidential information about international money transfers.

The consortium known as SWIFT – society for worldwide inter-bank financial telecommunications – was brought into the limelight when the New York Times last week reported that officials from the CIA, the FBI and other US agencies had since 2001 been allowed to inspect the transfers.

Prime minister Guy Verhofstadt asked the Belgian justice ministry on Monday (26 June) to investigate whether SWIFT acted illegally in allowing US authorities to inspect the transfers without the support of a Belgian judge. "We need to ask what are the legal frontiers in this case and whether it is right that a US civil servant could look at private transactions without the approval of a Belgian judge," said government spokesman Didier Seus, according to the International Herald Tribune.

Also on Monday, US president George W. Bush called the media coverage of the SWIFT case "disgraceful" while the European Commission said it had no authority to investigate it. "The disclosure of this program is disgraceful," Mr Bush said at a Washington news conference according to press reports. "We're at war with a bunch of people who want to hurt the United States of America. And for people to leak that program and for a newspaper to publish it does great harm to the United States of America," he said.

"At first sight, it would appear that there is no European legislation covering this type of transfer," commission spokesman Friso Abbing Roscam said. "Therefore it is a matter for national law." "Everyone agrees that in the fight against terrorism we do need to have measures against the funding of terrorism," he added. "But the emphasis is that this must be done with full respect in the respect of data privacy."

Although SWIFT is based in Belgium – a European Union member – it is also subject to US laws as it has offices there. The US tapping into confidential bank transfers could therefore be legal as long as it is outside of Belgium where court-approved warrants are required. The case comes at a time when the EU and the US have been criticised for the extent to which civil liberties can be sacrificed in the war on terrorism. In May, Europe's highest court of justice overturned an EU-US deal which provides Washington with personal data on airline passengers flying from Europe to the US.

Nearly 8,000 financial institutions in 205 countries use SWIFT, which works as a central global centre operating a secure electronic messaging service. The networks transmit nearly €4.8 trillion daily between banks, stock exchanges and other institutions.

LONDON'S ROYAL ACADEMY - AN AMUSING MISTAKE BELIES THE CONCEPTIONS OF ABSTRACT ART
Blog R/Waghorne

In this year's summer show at London's Royal Academy of Arts, "Exhibit 1201" is a large rectangular tablet of slate with a tiny barbell-shaped bit of boxwood on top. Its creator David Hensel must be pleased to have been selected from among some 9,000 applicants for the world's largest open-submission exhibition of contemporary art. Nevertheless, he was bemused to discover that in transit his sculpture had gotten separated from its base. Judging the two components as different submissions, the RA had rejected his artwork proper - a finely wrought laughing head in jesmonite - and selected the plinth.

Sometimes you really have to wonder....

US military honoured in secret by Britian

Antony Barnett, investigations editor
Sunday June 18, 2006
The Observer

The government has been secretly awarding honours to senior figures in the US military and foreign businessmen with lucrative public sector contracts. The Observer has obtained a Foreign Office list detailing all non-British citizens who have been awarded honours since 2003 - the first time the complete three-year dossier has been released.

It has emerged that Riley Bechtel, one of America's wealthiest citizens, a man with intimate ties to the Republican administration, billionaire boss of the US-based Bechtel Corporation, which has won big transport and nuclear contracts in Britain and made a fortune from the Iraq war, was secretly awarded a CBE in 2003.

This award has never been made public either by the British government or Bechtel. At the time Jack Straw, now Leader of the House of Commons, was Foreign Secretary. Although there is no suggestion of any wrongdoing, questions are being asked about whether the Foreign Office kept the awards quiet for fear of a political backlash.

But the Foreign Office says this is normal practice. ....According to the Foreign Office list the Queen approved Bechtel's honour .

The list shows that under Straw the Foreign Office awarded honours to several senior US military personnel involved in the Iraq invasion. These included the US military commander General Tommy Franks, known as 'Mr Shock and Awe' for his role in devising the battle plan for the 2003 invasion. Others include Vice-Admiral Timothy Keating, who was in charge of all maritime forces involved in Operation Iraqi Freedom; Rear Admiral Barry Costello, commander of the Third Fleet and Task Force 55 during the Iraq invasion; Lieutenant-Colonel Mark Childress; and General Tad Moseley, chief of staff to the US Air Force. The row comes as protests mount at the CBE given to Andy Hayman, the head of Scotland Yard's anti-terror operations who is at the centre of investigations into the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes at Stockwell tube station last July and the raid at Forest Gate, east London, earlier this month.

Baker said: 'This shows that what matters in Tony Blair's Britain is those with power, money and a US accent. These awards are supposed to be for good works and those that have helped Britain. Instead it seems they are being handed out to those who have supported Blair's misguided policies at home and overseas.'

The British Troops are not in Afghanistan to stem the opium trade....

Offensive Unleashes Afghan Heroin

The fall of the Taliban and the rise of Northern Alliance forces have led to a resumption in poppy cultivation, bolstering the opium trade and increasing the quantity of heroin and morphine destined for Europe and the United States. Afghanistan once supplied 75 percent of the world’s heroin, before a ruthless Taliban crackdown.

The National Platform EU Research and Information Centre 24 Crawford Avenue Dublin 9 Tel.: (01)8305792
Wednesday 21 June 2006

      MORNING IRELAND BOOBS AGAIN OVER "AMBASSADOR" JOHN BRUTON  

Morning Ireland,  RTE's flagship current affairs programme,  referred on several occasions this morning to John Bruton, whom they were interviewing, as the EU's "ambassador" to Washington.
John Bruton is not an EU "ambassador".  Only States have ambassador and the EU is not -  as yet -  a State.  Bruton's proper official designation is "Head of Representation" or "Head of Delegation", and that is how he should be referred to.
One does not refer to Mr Martin Territt, Director of the European  Commission Representation in Ireland, as "EU Ambassador to Ireland", and John Bruton's status in Washington is the same as his.   Regrettably, Mr Bruton did not himself correct the wrongful designation during the programme interview.  He let it pass uncorrected, as he does regularly on such occasions.  
No doubt John Bruton would like to be a real ambassador, as he certainly would like the EU to become a real supranational State. Although the EU has many of the features of a State, it still lacks some vital ones. The European Union, in contrast to the European Community, does not even have legal personality. So how can it have ambassadors?
If the French and Dutch peoples had not rejected the proposed EU Constitution last summer and this document had been ratified, it would have given the EU the constitutional form of a State, together with a Foreign Minister and diplomatic corps.  Its emissaries abroad could then properly call themselves ambassadors. But that has not happened, and almost certainly will not happen.
One should not encourage the EU in its pretensions to super-statehood or John Bruton in his pretensions to real ambassadorial status by endowing him incorrectly with this title and its associated status.
RTE, and especially one of its major current affairs programmes, should be a stickler for accuracy and protocol in such matters. RTE has given Mr Bruton this wrongful designation before.
This statement is being sent widely throughout the Irish media for their information. It is being posted by surface mail to Mr Fintan Drury, chairman of the RTE Authority, to Mr Cathal Goan, RTE Director- General, to  Mr Adrian Moynes, Director RTE Radio, and to the Morning Ireland  producer.  It is also being sent to John Bruton himself in the hope that it may encourage him to correct such misappellations in future.   (Signed)  
Anthony Coughlan Secretary

EU drug consumption increasing, report says

26.06.2006 - 18:20 CET| By Aleander Balzan
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Figures published by the European Commission on the occasion of the World No Drugs Day (26 June) show that within the EU member states, over 8,000 people die of drugs overdoses each year.

According to the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA), the majority of those dying from drug overdoses are mainly young men in their 20s and 30s. But it is estimated that the total number of drugs-related deaths could be as much as three times higher, due to under-reporting of deaths and to deaths indirectly linked to drugs such as HIV deaths.

The amount of drug consumption is continuously increasing and there are little signs that the situation might get better, the EMCDDA indicates. Each month, about 1.5 million Europeans use cocaine and 12 million persons use cannabis with 3 million of those taking cannabis doing this on a daily basis. The EMCDDA study also says that 8 percent of young people within the EU take ecstasy on a regular basis, making ecstasy the second most common drug after cannabis.

Meanwhile, the European Commission adopted on Monday (26 June) a green paper which calls for more dialogue with civil society organisations active in the fight against drug abuse. "Within our policy, close cooperation with partners of civil society is a key to success. My objective for the coming months is to bring civil society organisations more closely into the policy process at EU level," said commissioner for Justice Franco Frattini. "We know that health policy can only be effective if it is informed and supported by those working in the field. This is why it is important to ensure the involvement of drug-related NGOs, which can only improve our policy focus and relevance," commissioner for health Markos Kyprianou added.