Europe Plays Growing Role in Helping Iraqis Build Better Future

US Department of State:

"Europe Plays Growing Role in Helping Iraqis Build Better Future
State's Fried testifies on U.S.-European challenges and opportunities

Despite past differences on the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, Europe and the United States increasingly are working together to promote stability in Iraq and to meet a growing number of global challenges, a senior U.S. diplomat says.

The United States and Europe are working together “to promote freedom and prosperity in the world,” Daniel Fried, assistant secretary of state for European affairs, said in congressional testimony March 8.

“Our common effort seeks to extend the freedom and prosperity we enjoy beyond the borders of Europe, not just to provide for our own security but to improve the security and prosperity of the world as a whole,” he told the Europe and Emerging Threats Subcommittee of the House International Relations Committee.

Fried said that in 2005 the United States and the European Union (EU) co-hosted a conference on Iraq that was attended by ministerial-level officials from more than 80 countries “and which reaffirmed the international community's support for Iraq's democratic future.”

The United States and its European allies, Fried said, have made “major advances” in Afghanistan, and the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) will expand its presence in 2006 to southern Afghanistan."

Deutsche Welle: Germany: and France at Helm of EU Constitution Makeover

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Germany and France at Helm of EU Constitution Makeover

Sold to the public as an "EU constitution" the first time around, the document meant to structure and streamline the bloc failed to fly. Now, France and Germany are hoping a repackaged treaty might prove more marketable.

The EU Constitution is being dusted off and given a whole new image in an attempt to make it more palatable to a skeptical public. Overseeing the makeover are German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Jacques Chirac.

Reuters UK: Europe on hold until Chirac departs by Yves Clarisse and Paul Taylor

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Europe on hold until Chirac departs by Yves Clarisse and Paul Taylor

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union is waiting increasingly impatiently for the departure of French President Jacques Chirac and hoping his government's "economic patriotism" will not have done too much damage in the meantime. In the European Commission, the European Parliament and among the 25 member governments, officials acknowledge openly that many key decisions on the EU's future direction are on hold until the May 2007 French presidential election.

Chirac has not officially stated he will not run. But attention has focused on Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy or Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin as the candidate of the centre-right. An obvious Socialist contender has not emerged.

The Globalist: Why the Next Decade Will Be Neither Chinese Nor Indian by Prabhu Guptara

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Why the Next Decade Will Be Neither Chinese Nor Indian by Prabhu Guptara

China and India are poised to be the next economic powerhouses of the world. However, according to Prabhu Guptara, Japan’s preeminence in robotic technology may require us to reconsider their economic potential. In this two-part series, he makes an argument for Japan, while also illuminating his concerns for a future with highly sophisticated robots.

BBC NEWS: Benigni shooting Iraq 'comedy'

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Italy: Benigni shooting Iraq 'comedy'

Italian actor and director Roberto Benigni is to make a film about the Iraq war. La Tigre e la Neve (The Tiger and the Snow) is set in Iraq in March 2003 - right at the beginning of the US-led campaign. In spite of the subject matter, Oscar-winner Benigni intends the film - which is due for release in 2005 - to be a comedy.

Benigni plays the part of a poet who is in Iraq by chance and is caught up in the events.

Middle East Times: Viewpoint: Arab-bashers who double as Euro-bashers by Louis Werner

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Arab-bashers who double as Euro-bashers by Louis Werner

The results from a recent survey of American attitudes toward Muslims and Arabs are not surprising. One in three Americans report having heard racist slurs - the question wasn't asked if the respondent himself had done the slurring - and one in four admit to holding anti-Arab views. But certain pundits must be enjoying every minute of it, for they are the ones who have invested so much of themselves since 9/11 in crying wolf. And among these Arab-bashers are a small group who double as Euro-bashers. So for them a perfect storm of bigotry, a synergistic interplay between two fundamentally distinct but now interrelated prejudices, has erupted.Two recent books, While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within and Menace in Europe: Why the Continent's Crisis is America's, Too, conger up fears of re-fighting, and this time losing, a world war across Europe whose enemy now is Muslim. The one word title Eurabia, subconsciously alliterating with "phobia", cuts right to the chase. You don't have to hate Europe in order to poke a stick at it, or to associate with those who do - after all, Richard Perle has a house in the south of France. Bruce Bawer, author of While Europe Slept, decamped America first for Amsterdam and then for Oslo in order to enjoy its continental manners.

Claire Berlinski's blurb on the back of her book Menace in Europe announces her bi-city love affair with Paris and Istanbul as a means of burnishing her cosmopolitan credentials. You won't catch these two pouring French wine down toilets, as was gleefully reported from the US in the lead-up to the Iraq war.

Truth About Trade & Technology - EU's Protectionist Rancor Worsens - by: William Echikson

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Brussels – After two days of consultations aimed at calming Europe's divisions over protectionism, European leaders have ended up more divided than ever, with some warning the issue could harm the stability of the European Union. European financial and industrial ministers wrangled here over whether to block cross-border mergers, whether to allow a single continentwide energy regulator and whether to do more to block rising imports of shoes from China. Rather than reaffirming their belief in constructing a giant 25-nation powerhouse able to compete on a global scale, however, countries' individual interests in so-called economic patriotism, as France has dubbed it, triumphed for the moment. "It's difficult to have a common currency" in such circumstances, warned Italian Economy Minister Giulio Tremonti, after he failed to win any change in France's plans to merge state-run utilities Gaz de France SA and Suez SA, which would freeze out Italy's Enel SpA from buying in. "This is a turning point for Europe. We are not talking about company takeovers but the future of Europe."

German President Horst Köhler warned the European Parliament in Strasbourg that "those who weaken the European internal market through protectionism do themselves a disservice."

FT.com: Call for EU to speed up economic reforms

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Call for EU to speed up economic reforms by Andrew Bounds and Chris Smyth in Brussels

Europe's business leaders on Thursday told their political counterparts to hasten economic reforms or face obsolescence.At the opening of a two-day conference in Brussels ahead of next week's European Union summit, leading chief executives lined up to ram home the message that competition from Asia would only increase. Heinrich von Pierer, chairman of Siemens, the German conglomerate, said: "Globalisation has so far been a storm. The hurricane is yet to come. We have to prepare."

Mr von Pierer, who heads German industry's Asia-Pacific forum, said that India and China were pursuing a "high-tech, low-cost" model of growth, and that greater innovation was the only way for Europe to keep ahead.

The Empire of Europe

WamS.de Blogs - Apocalypso

"The Empire of Europe

The United States is not today’s empire. The European Union is

Europe is taking on its imperial heritage and acting like an imperial power, not only in the Balkans. The European Union’s problem, however, is that neither its citizens nor the majority of its politicians have faced up to this reality. So they frequently discuss the wrong questions.

The apostle Paul was almost lynched as a traitor to the faith in the temple in Jerusalem. At the last minute the intervention of a Roman cohort rescued him from the hysterical mob. During the ensuing interrogation the tentmaker, rabbi, and Christian from Tarsus let it be known he was a Roman citizen: “The commander rushed in and asked Paul, ‘Is it true? Are you a Roman citizen?’ ‘I am,’ answered Paul. The commander then observed, ‘It cost me quite a sum to get my citizenship.’ ‘Ah,’ said Paul, ‘but I am a citizen by birth!’”"

Kansas City Star: French economic flexibility makes Dick Cheney look like a yoga master by comparison - by Jonah Goldberg

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French economic flexibility makes Dick Cheney look like a yoga master by comparison - by Jonah Goldberg

Imagine riot police in the US had to be sent into Harvard to quell an enormous student protest. OK, that’s not terribly hard to imagine. But instead of the usual reasons for prosperous students to get all uppity — gay rights, anti-war hoopla, a strong math requirement — imagine that Harvard students rioted over the possibility that they could ever be fired from their first jobs. Well, that’s pretty much what happened over the weekend at the Sorbonne, the "creme de la Brie" of French education. French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, the leader with the most important hair in Europe, pushed through a law that says employers don’t have to give lifetime job security to job applicants under the age of 26. Seriously!!

France passed the law because its economic flexibility makes Dick Cheney look like a yoga master by comparison. Until this latest dip of the French baby toe into economic reform, employers had little choice but to offer open-ended employment contracts that amounted to “employment for life.” For the first two years of what the French call the First Employment Contract, employers can fire you if you don’t do your work satisfactorily or if they can’t afford to keep paying you.

FXStreet.com: Euro Zone annual inflation slowdown in February

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Euro Zone annual inflation slowdown in February

FXstreet.com (Barcelona) – Euro Zone’s harmonised index of consumer prices rose slightly in February to 2.3% after a 2.4% in January, a year earlier the rate was 2.1%, European Union statistics office Eurostat confirmed on Thursday. Inflation softened due to dissipation of the effect of high energy prices. Eurostat shows that prices excluding energy, food, alcohol and tobacco (its favoured measure of core inflation) were up 1.2 pct year-on-year in February, unchanged from the January rate of increase. Energy prices grew by 0.4% month-on-month and 12.5% year-on-year in February, down from a 13.6% year-on-year increase in January. Without the energy and organic food component, prices rose 0.2% month-on-month for an unchanged 1.3% increase year-on-year.

Core inflation shows then that oil prices have not yet boosted prices in other sectors.

Macon Daily: "The Vision Thing" by Clive Lindley

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MACON,GA.- Fact : The worlds largest democracies give only short-term assured power to their elected executives and governments: the US President four years; UK five; France five; Germany four years; India five. When elections fail to confirm an existing government, it can result in a ninety-degree shift away from many policies of the outgoing administration. All of this means that short-termism is King of democratic politics and therefore the way we run our lives. It is likely to remain so.Non-democracies are saved in this regard from the discontinuity of elections - but budgets remain and long-term projects have to compete with contemporary ones, often under pressure to improve life for a restive citizenry.These simple truths mean without doubt, that because of the overarching domestic agendas of each of the world's nearly two hundred nations, added to the unbridled capitalism and exploitation in many, the myopia that this causes has become a major contributor to a web of recognizable and because unheeded, growing threats against nothing less than our very species and our home planet. Many of the vital problems that the world faces are not short-term, and consequently are not being addressed. Even when governments realize the importance of these issues they usually take a position based on two key short-term criteria. The 'dividend' effect upon upcoming elections; and on the degree of pressure it would put on current spending plans.

This "How does it play with the voters" approach, means that ultimately, it is the Karl Roves and Alastair Campbells of politics that become the final arbiters to determine all of our destinies.

BayStreet.ca: Aleris International Inc agreed to acquire Corus Group Plc

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March 15, 2006 - United Kingdom — US Company, Aleris International Inc, agreed to acquire the US$1.8 billion revenue downstream business and assets of aluminum operations from Corus Group Plc for an approximate consideration of US$840 million in cash. The consideration excludes assumption of about EUR28 million (US$33.4 million) of debt and other liabilities. Corus' aluminum rolling and extrusion businesses are included in the transaction but its primary aluminum smelters are not. The rolling business operates in Koblenz, Germany; Duffel, Belgium; and Cap-de-la-Madeleine and Toronto, Canada. The Koblenz rolling mill is known to be one of the world's most specialized mills with longstanding relationships in industries such as aerospace, commercial plate and brazing sheet customers worldwide. The extrusion facilities are located in Vogt, Bonn and Bitterfeld, Germany; Duffel, Belgium; and Tianjin, Peoples Republic of China. Aleris estimates the Corus downstream businesses generated revenues of about EUR1.478 million (US$1.8 million) in 2005. Corus will retain its smelter business in Delfzijl, Netherlands and Voerde, Germany. Aleris will fund the acquisition from a combination of debt and equity provided from Deutsche Bank AG, Ctigroup Corporate and Investment Banking. Following completion of the acquisition the combined group will have 8,800 employees and will operate 52 manufacturing facilities in North America, South America, Europe and Asia. The acquisition is expected to enable Aleris global reach and new applications with superior technology and broader range of products. The transaction is subject to regulatory approvals and is expected to complete in the third quarter of 2006.

Auto Industry News: February European new car registrations rose 2.1% year on year

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Total new passenger cars registrations in Europe (EU-23 + EFTA) in February 2006 amounted to 1,079,101 units, a year-on-year increase of +2.1% (and +2.3% in the EU-15). With an almost equal number of working days throughout the region (only Portugal had one extra trading day), the ACEA said today the figures seemed to confirm an encouraging start of the year. The total registrations figures for the first two months of the year show an increase of +2.5% for Europe and of +2.7% for the EU-15. The positive February total was reached despite the loss reported by three out of the five main markets. Spain (-2.3%), Germany (-1.9%) and the UK (-1.4%) suffered losses, while Italy (+6%) and France (+0.6%) reported growth. Among the EU-15, only three other countries posted losses, while the remaining seven ended the month with increases, comprised between +20.8% in Belgium (still under the boosting effect of the Brussels Motor Show) and +3.5% in Greece. Fiat’s new Grande Punto became Europe’s best selling car last month, helping increase the Fiat Group’s market share for the month (to 9%) and for the first two months of the year.

Data by country and by manufacturer are posted on www.acea.be.

Forbes.com: Meggitt wins components contract for Airbus military transport plane

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Meggitt wins components contract for Airbus military transport plane

LONDON (AFX) - Meggitt PLC, the aerospace group, said it won a contract from EADS CASA of Spain, an industrial partner of prime contractor Airbus Military, to design and manufacture components for the A400M military transport aircraft. Meggitt said it will supply actuators for the engine nacelle air doors on the aircraft. The A400M programme has received 192 firm aircraft orders and is expected to yield total orders of around 400 aircraft worldwide.

csmonitor.com: Election politics show Israel turns its back on 58 years of commitment to negotiating peace with its neighbors - by Helena Cobban

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Election politics show Israel turns its back on 58 years of commitment to negotiating peace with its neighbors - by Helena Cobban

The billboards have been going up, and each night's TV schedule is punctuated by a 40-minute block of state-funded political advertisements. Israel's voters and 15 political parties are preparing for an election March 28.

The choices they face there have been transformed by the upheavals the country's politics have seen in the past eight months - the clear frontrunner is the Kadima party, meaning "forward," which did not even exist until November. The most distinctive feature of the new party's platform, moreover, is that it turns its back on 58 years of Israeli commitment to negotiating peace with its neighbors, promising voters instead that a Kadima-led government is ready and eager to draw Israel's borders quite unilaterally.

On March 8 the party's head, Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, spelled out his intention that by 2010, "Israel will be disengaged from the vast majority of the Palestinian population, within new borders." EU-DIGEST Editorial Comment: Unfortunately the EU seems to have no leverage on Israel's political decissions despite the fact that in terms of total trade, the EU is Israel’s major partner. To make matters worse, the EU, which used to have a historically friendly relationship with the Palestinians is now considered "in the same camp as the US and Israel" by the Palestinians. The so called "Middle East Quartet" consisting of Palestine, Israel, the US and the EU, who were to carry out the Middle East "Roadmap to Peace" have come to a dead end.

Hürriyet: Turkish and Kurdish intellectuals meet over Kurdish issue

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Turkish and Kurdish intellectuals meet over Kurdish issue

Turkish and Kurdish intellectuals alike called for the PKK to lay down their arms at a gathering this weekend. Tight security surrounded the gathering of Turkish and Kurdish intellectuals who came together to discuss a peaceful resolution to the 22-year old Kurdish conflict in the southeast of the country. Speakers voiced the crisis on both sides of the debate: "There is a crisis of confidence between the two sides," Kurdish rights campaigner Sertac Bucak said. "There is a Kurdish phobia in Turkey." More than 45 Turkish and Kurdish intellectuals, politicians and journalists of various political convictions were taking part in the conference, entitled "The Kurdish question in Turkey: ways for a democratic settlement". The event was designed to promote ways in which Turkey can end the conflict to aid smoother membership into the European Union. Attendees were searched by police as they entered Bilgi University, and riot police were on guard outside the venue. The strict security measures were imposed by police after nationalists threatened to disrupt the two-day event.

Organizers said the conference could adopt a final declaration on Sunday, appealing to the government for more reforms to resolve the conflict, which has claimed some 37,000 lives since the rebel Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) began fighting for self-rule in the mainly Kurdish southeast in 1984.

IHT: Unethical behavior in the European Parliament: Legislators at the EU hang on to their perks - by Dan Bilefsky

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Unethical behavior in the European Parliament: Legislators at the EU hang on to their perks - by Dan Bilefsky

Despite public vows by members of the European Parliament to give up their generous perks, only a few have proved willing to part with what are essentially tax-free handouts for travel and other privileges, according to an internal report from the Parliament's secretary general obtained by the International Herald Tribune. In another example of Parliament's excessive spending, costs of interpretation and translation in an expanded EU are spiraling out of control, according to a separate draft report from the legislature's budgetary control committee.

The committee said it is "very concerned" that nearly €26 million, or $31 million - 16 percent of the €163 million spent on interpretation - is used to hire translators who are on call or sitting idle. Before the last European Parliament elections, in June 2004, more than 200 candidates from Germany to Sweden pledged to eliminate travel-expense perks that have allowed Parliament members to earn generous and tax-free profits by claiming reimbursement for as much as 10 times the price of their airline tickets.

USATODAY.com - 3 years into war, U.S. envoy cuts to the truth in Iraq

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3 years into war, U.S. envoy cuts to the truth in Iraq

Three years after the United States invaded Iraq — the anniversary is this weekend — some healthy realism appears to be creeping into the American assessment of the war, if not yet into the rhetoric from Washington. In three speeches this week, President Bush is again casting Iraq as a glass half-full. Yes, there is violence and the threat of civil war, he said in his first speech Monday, but Iraqi forces are gaining the strength to deal with it as U.S. troops prepare to draw down. Bush is trying to build much-needed support for a war that, in a new poll, 57% say was a mistake.

But in Iraq, the U.S. ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, is telling the story in more somber tones that reflect the broader reality. The Iraq invasion, Khalilzad says, opened up a "Pandora's box" of sectarian conflicts, which could lead to a regional war and the rise of religious extremists who "would make Taliban Afghanistan look like child's play." All it would take would be another devastating attack on a holy site. The need is to get the international community involved in pressuring Iraq's groups with every tool available. Khalilzad (and Ted Kennedy) favors a conference, which has not been given a serious push.

ceskenoviny.cz: Klaus warns against integration deepening without EU constitution

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Klaus warns against integration deepening without EU constitution

Berlin- Czech President Vaclav Klaus is afraid that the EU continues deepening its integration even without a European constitutional treaty, he says in the latest issue of the German weekly Der Spiegel, and warns against "the creeping process of unification" of the EU. "I can see that we find ourselves in a dangerous situation again. I've noticed that the deepening of EU [integration] unfortunately continues, even without a constitution, as a creeping process of unification - which is even more dangerous. It is very difficult to slow down this process, it continues without a massive participation of the public," Klaus told the magazine. "My criticism addresses the form and method of European integration," he points out. "There are hundreds of conclusions they send in from the EU headquarters. I consider, for example, the statements about a possible harmonisation of taxes in Europe to be especially warning, or the curbing of liberalisation in cross-border movement of services," Klaus says.
"For the last time I could not believe my own ears at hearing our own [Czech] EU commissioner, Vladimir Spidla, propose something I find incredible: [to establish] a fund for victims of globalisation. This is the purest imaginable communism, like in the [Leonid] Brezhnev era. At the time, too, people could not but learn from newspapers what deals the [communist] leaders had struck on their behalf. I can well remember that feeling of hopelessness," Klaus says.

Note editor EU-DIGEST: President Klaus seems to be right on target. It is high time the Commission and European politicians take some realistic steps to get EU Citizens involved in shaping the face of tomorrow's Europe. The EU does not need more faceless committees to review what its citizens need to do. Terrorism, religion and the exaggerated importance of the global market place are divisive issues and are distracting us from focusing on how to make our democracy, education, health, the economy, fair-trade, employment, and the environment work better, to benefit all the citizens of the EU. Together we must find issues that unite us, and make us proud to be European. Corporate Europe, which knows the true meaning of market research and promotion better than anyone else needs to step away from being just a critical bystander, and take an active part in this effort to help Europeans focus on their future. Nobody can be excluded in this process. The future of our children depends on it.