WESTERN EUROPEAN NEWS DIGEST
Danube Basin Countries Adopt Declaration on Regional Cooperation
Delegations representing the 13 countries comprising the Danube River's basin areaAustria, Bosnia and Hercegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Germany, Moldavia, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Ukraine, and Yugoslaviaagreed on May 27, in Vienna, to amplify and improve the existing cooperation and support the existing international organizations active in the Danube area, through a Danube Region Cooperation Process, with the aim of:
*Improving economic cooperation to make optimal use of the Danube for transport;
*Developing regional infrastructure;
*Bringing countries that are potential candidates for European Union membership, but have not yet started the association process, like Ukraine and Moldavia, closer to the EU.
The cooperation also covers the areas of culture, tourism, and ecology. The process is conceived as a continual effort, based on bi-annual conferences at the Foreign Ministerial level. The next such meeting is to be held in 2004, in Bucharest, Romania.
NATO Troops Raid Bosnian Serb Air Force HQ
According to a report filed with AP out of Sarajevo on May 29, NATO troops on May 28 raided the Bosnian Serb Air Force headquarters, investigating Bosnian espionage against SFOR and NATO. An estimated 50 troops took part in the raid of Bosnian AF headquarters in Banja Luka, SFOR spokesman Maj. Scott Lundy reported. Specifically, the allegation has to do with Bosnian Serb electronic monitoring of SFOR and NATO aircraft. The raid followed an investigation of two Bosnian radar sites in northern Bosnia accused of observing NATO communications, which monitoring is banned under the 1995 peace agreement. Computers and documents were seized in the raid.
The head of the Bosnian Serb Air Force, Lt. Col. Gen. Milan Torbica, has been suspended by SFOR commander Lt. Gen. John Sylvester, pending a full investigation. Sylvester also demanded that the Bosnian Serbs disclose electronic warfare and electronic intelligence monitory operations directed at SFOR, and banned any Bosnian Serb Air Force training or movement during the investigation.
Meanwhile, according to a variety of Balkan sources over the days May 22-26, the fourth military attack has taken place against Macedonia in four days: On May 25 the new Kosovo Liberation Armynow calling itself the Albanian National Army (ANA)launched its fourth terrorist attack on the Macedonian Army in four days. The renewed campaign was unleashed while the Kosovo Assembly on May 23 voted a resolution declaring the borders with Macedonia "illegal." The representatives of the Serbian community in Kosovo refused to participate in the debate.
Following the 1999 NATO bombings of Yugoslavia, including Kosovo, the Serbs in the province have been subjected to a campaign of constant aggression and harassment. A large number were forced out of Kosovo by ethnic cleansing. The Assembly itself is an administrative organ put in power following elections conducted under the control of NATO, elections that Serb representatives have declared lawless. The Assembly, however, has only administrative powers, at least officially. Decision-making is in the hands of NATO and the UN administrator. Officially, the province of Kosovo is still a part of Yugoslavia, on the basis of UN Resolution 1244.
The Kosovo Assembly resolution calling the borders with Macedonia "illegal" was also made while the Kosovo "Prime Minister," Bajram Rexhepi, was on an official visit in Washington, and was received as the "Prime Minister" by Secretary of State Colin Powell. Rexhepi, who is a former member of the Kosovo Liberation Army, told the Washington media that Kosovo independence under the present regime has to be accepted, because "There are radical groups [in Kosovoed.] ready to start a conflict if we do not see action." Until the May 25 attack, leading NATO officials had maintained a consistent position of minimizing the relevance of the new wave of terrorist attacks, calling them "isolated" and "limited." However, the ANA forces have been seen training in uniform, without prompting any intervention by NATO or the many agencies of the international community.
The UN high representative in Kosovo, the UN Security Council, the U.S., Europe, and so on, have rejected the Kosovo Assembly's resolution concerning the borders, but the terrorist operations, instead of decreasing, are escalating. The situation is similaraccording to well-informed Balkan sourcesto what happened in Macedonia last year with the terrorist offensive launched out of Kosovo.
The Macedonian Prime Minister said the resolution on the borders means "cold or even real war." Ljubco Georgievski stated May 24 that the Kosovo Assembly's resolution declaring the Macedonia border "illegal," raises a situation of war-tension similar to that between India and Pakistan. "The nonrecognition of the borders constitutes a real and continuous danger," he said, "as a new assault like the one of yesterday could happen tomorrow or in the future." The Prime Minister stressed that several times Macedonia has requested increased NATO attention to the borders inside Kosovo, making concrete proposals, "but for inexplicable reasons we never did get a satisfatory response."
Interestingly, Georgievski also denounced the International Monetary Fund. In fact, in a pre-electoral situation (elections will take place in September) and while the trade unions have declared a general strike due to the dramatic economic conditions, Georgievski said he intends to increase minimum wages. However, the IMF has vetoed it; wages must remain frozen despite the galloping inflation. "The problem is not that Macedonia does not have enough funds allocated to increase the salaries ... the problem lies with the IMF ... the IMF does not want to open this issue. In the past three years I have been stressing that, but pressures are imposed by the international organizations that insist that salaries must be 'frozen.' ..."
More German States Impose Budget Freeze
More German states are imposing budget freezes, with three statesHesse, Saarland, Thuringiaannouncing such steps in one day alone. The states are running into ballooning deficits because of drastically sinking tax revenues.
Several other states, like Berlin, Schleswig-Holstein, Hamburg, Bremen, Lower Saxony, are in the same situation and had already decreed a budget freeze.
All of this implies that every single euro assigned for spending will be up for review, before its expenditure is authorized. The budget freeze therefore actually amounts to a budget cut.
Rifts in Atlantic Alliance Get Renewed Attention from U.S. Writers
In the aftermath of President Bush's trip to Europe, the rifts and tensions in the Atlantic Alliance are coming in for renewed scrutiny from American editorialists and policy gurus.
Thus, Newsweek International editor Fareed Zakaria writes in the June 3 issue of Newsweek magazine that Europe must get back into the business of making war. "A battle is brewing across the Atlantic, but it's mostly a war of words," Zakaria says, referring to accusations of European "anti-Semitism" and "irrelevance," and U.S. "global hegemony" and "unilateralism."
"Beneath the Atlantic froth, however," he continues, "there is one large issue that, unaddressed, could fatally divide the Alliance. If it wants to be a global power and a player in the Atlantic Alliance, Europe has to get back into the business of making war.... Europeans simply do not believe in making war anymore."
The division of laborthat "Americans fight and Europeans do peacekeeping and reconstruction"can't be sustained. "Military power trumps all others...."
Zakaria says that Europe will have to develop a significant strike force, which would strengthen the Alliance, and would make Europe "a more mature world power."
Meanwhile, in a May 26 op ed in the Washington Post, Robert Kagan (a resident clash-of-civilizations guru at the Carnegie Endowment, where his specialty is China-bashing), wrote that the source of "the U.S.-Europe divide" is that "Europe ... has entered a post-historical paradise, the realization of Immanuel Kant's 'perpetual peace.' The United States, meanwhile, remains mired in history, exercising power in the anarchic Hobbesian world, where international rules are unreliable, and where security and the promotion of a liberal order still depend on the possession and use of military might."
"The irony is that this transatlantic disagreement is the fruit of successful transatlantic policies. As Joschka Fischer and other Europeans admit, the United States made the 'new Europe' possibleby leading the democracies to victory in World War II and the Cold War, and by providing the solution to the age-old 'German problem.' Even today, Europe's rejection of power politics ultimately depends on America's willingness to use force around the world against those who still do believe in power politics. Europe's Kantian order depends on the United States using power according to the old Hobbesian rules.
"Most Europeans don't acknowledge the great paradox: that their passage into post-history has depended on the United States not making the same passage. Instead, they have come to view the United States simply as a rogue colossus, in many respects a bigger threat to the pacific ideals Europeans now cherish, than Iraq or Iran. Americans, in turn, have come to view Europe as annoying, irrelevant, naive and ungrateful, as it takes a free ride on American power...."
Turkish Prime Minister Ill, Misses Meeting on EU
Turkey's Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit is very ill, so much so that he missed a meeting on the European Union. Ecevit has been hospitalized twice in the past month, the second time earlier this week. However, Ecevit was too ill to meet with his top military and political leaders May 30 in the National Security Council. The purpose of the meeting had been to discuss Turkey's efforts to join the European Union.
|