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Germany Highlights the Risk of a Catastrophic Scenario in Iraq
From our correspondent in Berlin Georges Marion
Paris le Monde
Wednesday 12 February 2003
In the diplomatic battles of advocates and adversaries of a military operation in Iraq, Germany has done its sums: eleven against four. Eleven members of the Security Council (France, Russia, China, Germany, Angola, Cameroon, Chili, Guinea, Mexico, Pakistan, and Syria) according to Berlin, would favor an intensification of UN inspections. Four (United States, Great Britain, Bulgaria, Spain) judge that it's time to go to war.
This calculation, which gives the majority to the adversaries of a military operation in Iraq (Chili has already realigned with American positions) was revealed by a high official Tuesday February 11 during a meeting organized in the Chancellery with about a hundred journalists.
This official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, had the delicate mission of specifying what his country "wants and does not want" from the conflict, after several days of the mess brought on by the so-called Franco-German "secret plan" and two days before the solemn declaration which Chancellor Schroeder will make before the Bundestag Thursday February 13.
He repeated the message that had been agreed previously between Paris and Berlin: the concern to use all possible peaceful methods for Resolution 1441; the intensification of inspections and the multiplication of aerial resources to accompany them; the augmentation in the number of inspectors; the improvement of intelligence collection to guide the work; the desire to act in concert with Iraq's neighboring states so that Baghdad cannot evade the sanctions.
For the moment, there is no question of UN troops, specified this high official, an idea that had been discussed between the two countries and then discarded. "If we feel we need to abandon the logic of reinforced inspections and resort to military methods, then" he added," we will need a new resolution. However it is not the moment to plan military measures and a second resolution just as the inspections are beginning to have some success."
The entourage of German Foreign Affairs Minister, Joschka Fischer, declares that this process is the only practicable one that does not risk plunging the entire region into a "chaos from which no one knows what will emerge ". The Head of German Diplomacy's fear is, apparently, to see the Americans, "in an operation without equal since the Vietnam War", engaged in an uncertain occupation of Iraq, quitting if it turns our badly, and leaving a region devastated by unforeseeable reactions.
Obsessed by this catastrophic scenario, Joschka Fischer met last week with several of his counterparts in Egypt, Turkey, and Jordan, sounding out each one to evaluate the chances of a solution in which Saddam Hussein would renounce power on his own. Each listened, promised to exercise "a maximum amount of pressure" to bring Saddam Hussein to consider this solution. However each was profoundly skeptical about his ability to convince the Iraqi president.
CONTRADICTORY PRESSURES
The narrow path on which Germany has engaged, twisting between its refusal of war and the necessity to maintain its traditional alliances and the enormous pressures exerted by the United States, is far from unanimously supported by the country's political factions. After a long hesitation the Christian Democrats, operating under the contradictory pressures of an Atlantic sensibility and the opposition to the war of some of their key constituents, headed by the bishops, are in the process of choosing to firmly support the American position.
Tuesday, February 11, the parliamentary group of the Christian Democratic Union- Christian Socialist Union voted a motion defining the position they will defend during the Bundestag debate February 13. Only one deputy voted against. The motion incorporates the text the eight European states signed two weeks ago, supporting the United States' Iraq policy.
Iraq, it declares, must submit unconditionally and without delay to all UN Security Council resolutions, or else Baghdad will "bear the responsibility for the consequences of its refusal". During the meeting, Angela Merkel, President of the CDU and head of its parliamentary contingent, judged that Chancellor Schroeder's policy constitutes a "danger for Germany", adding that war, as a last recourse, could not be excluded.
President-Minister for Bavaria and unsuccessful conservative candidate for the Chancellery in the September 2002 elections, Edmund Stoiber defended an analogous position. The day before, in a remark of exceptional violence, he compared Gerhard Schroeder to Emperor William II whose foreign policy was characterized by an "absence of seriousness" and "megalomania".
Georges Marion
VGE Pleads or "Mutual Respect"
"Everyone will understand that the debate on a common European foreign policy has been pushed to the back-burner" but the actual divisions on the subject of Iraq demand that it be reengaged", announced Valery Giscard d'Estaing, Tuesday February 11 in Washington, where he had been invited to give the second "Henry Kissinger Conference" (an institution created by the former American Secretary of State) at the prestigious Library of Congress.
"If we had had a serious debate about Europe's common position and the American position on Iraq three months ago, the situation would be better today" judged the President of the Convention on the Reform of the Union to audience applause. The former French President pleaded for the pursuit of the "old relationship" between Europe and the United States in a climate of "mutual respect". "A stronger and more united Europe will be a more valuable and trustworthy partner to the United States" he claimed ’Äì (AFP.)
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)
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