In this issue:

Polish Leader's Remarks Reflect Intense Debate on Eurasian Land-Bridge

European Commission 'Does Not Intend To Convoke' a New Bretton Woods Conference

European Union Admits 10 New Members

Bush Call for German Soldiers Puts More Pressure on Schroeder

New German Green Party Leader: U.S. Use of Military Facilities in Iraq War Unconstitutional

Berlin Aspen Director: Germans Not a Military Partner

Blair Says No Need for Second UN Resolution on Iraq

From Volume 1, Issue Number 41 of Electronic Intelligence Weekly, Published Dec. 16, 2002

WESTERN EUROPEAN NEWS DIGEST

Polish Leader's Remarks Reflect Intense Debate on Eurasian Land-Bridge

Attending an event arranged by the German Industry Association (BDI) in Berlin Dec. 14, in the context of his talks with German government officials, Poland's Transport Minister and Vice Premier Marek Pol gave a speech stressing the importance of accelerating, and increasing funding for, the modernization of transport infrastructure in Poland. Raising railway, highway, seaport, and inland-shipping infrastructure to modern standards is important for the Polish economy, as it prepares to enter the European Union in May 2004, Pol said.

The last time Poland had a major upgrade of its national infrastructure was in the 1960s and 1970s; that infrastructure is now in urgent need of reconstruction. The upgrade is also important for the rest of Europe, as Poland and Germany are the essential transit countries for everything that travels between Europe and Asia, he said, and the opportunity to link and develop all the economies along this route, is offered now by the project to upgrade the Trans-Siberian Railroad and establish the Trans-Korean Railroad.

More must be done, more money must be invested, Pol said, and more money must come from sources outside the restricted national budgets of the states involved—although Warsaw is doing an immense amount by allocating 3 billion euros for the next three years, from its budget.

Pol (who is also Housing Minister) insisted that, along with the infrastructure development, it was necessary to launch a policy of home-building and developing the urban housing.

EIR presented Pol with Lyndon LaRouche's idea of long-term infrastructure loans based on the Kreditanstalt fuer Wiederaufbau model; Pol responded at some length on topics such as connecting the wide Russian railway gauge with the narrower European one in Slawkow, southern Poland. Pol also said that, just a week earlier, he had spoken in Moscow with Russian Railway Minister Gennady Fadeyev, during which a Polish proposal to have an international conference boosting discussion and decision-making on infrastructure development, received Russian support. The proposal, Pol said, is to hold a conference of Transport Ministers from Poland, Russia, Ukraine, the Czech Republic, China, Japan, the Koreas, and Germany, and possibly including ministers from Central Asia, and West and East European countries. Warsaw would host the conference sometime next February.

On the infrastructure lending idea, Pol said that his country had tried, through investment and pension funds, to raise extra money for projects, with only very limited success. They had tried to talk to the European Investment Bank (the European Union house bank) and gotten some money. But to develop the infrastructure, much more money is required, and discussion has started in Poland on whether some kind of state-guaranteed lending would improve the situation. (Earlier, during his presentation, Pol had also said that many things in the East would simply not work without the state, and so the EU leadership in Brussels would have to rethink its usual approach.)

European Commission 'Does Not Intend To Convoke' a New Bretton Woods Conference

The European Commission "does not intend to convoke" a New Bretton Woods Conference, declared EU Commissioner Pedro Solbes in a written answer to an interrogation earlier filed by Euro Parliamentarian Cristiana Muscardini.

The concept of a New Bretton Woods was developed and has been put forward by American economist and Presidential pre-candidate Lyndon LaRouche.

On the basis of the resolution favoring a New Bretton Woods conference adopted by the Italian Chamber of Deputies, Muscardini had asked whether the European Commission would adopt the same resolution and take initiatives to organize a New Bretton Woods conference. The answer from Solbes reads:

"The Commission does not intend to convoke an international conference to remedy the consequences of the speculative bubble." In a malicious twist, Solbes added that the Commission also "does not intend to adopt initiatives aimed at directly stabilize investors' wealth," slanderously implying that this was the concept informing Muscardini's request. Also, referring to the data on the global speculative bubble cited by Muscardini, taken from the Italian resolution, Solbes wrote that "The Commission cannot directly confirm the data mentioned in the written interrogation."

European Union Admits 10 New Members

The European Union Copenhagen summit has admitted 10 new members to the EU, bringing to 25 the number of nations that are members, vastly expanding the EU's land area, and its population into a "Mega-Europe" with an economy roughly the size of the United States' economy. According to some observers, the admission of Eastern European countries like Poland and the Czech Republic, will give the EU a more pro-American tilt in foreign policy.

Meanwhile, the European Commission has been drawing up a draft European constitution, codenamed Penelope; released just before the Copenhagen summit, which reviews ways in which countries might get kicked out of the EU. The Penelope draft asserts that Europe must "exercise the responsibilities of a world power," meaning a single foreign policy achieved by majority vote, and a mutual defense guarantee; and a "European model of society"—that is, more social policy controlled from Brussels. EU planners, led by Valery Giscard d'Estaing, the former French President who is chairing the constitutional convention, suggest that any country that fails to ratify the new European constitution (Ireland and Denmark are considered likely) should agree to leave the EU club.

The London Economist of Dec. 14-20 wonders whether this will have the effect of pushing rich countries out, even as the EU incorporates the poor countries of Eastern Europe—and what that effect, in turn, will be.

Bush Call for German Soldiers Puts More Pressure on Schroeder

"Bush Calls for German Soldiers" was the banner headline in the Sunday edition of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) Dec. 8. The article reported that, "according to information from the German government to this newspaper," during a meeting at NATO headquarters in Brussels Dec. 4, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz asked for NATO planes with allied and German soldiers, as well as further "joint capabilities" to be made available, in the event of war against Iraq.

The planes in question are AWACS, stationed in Germany and manned by joint teams, of which one-third are Germans. They could be used, according to the FAZ report, for air surveillance in defense of Turkey, or offensively. It is mooted that American, British, and French aircraft would be used offensively, and German aircraft would not, but the FAZ cites unnamed sources from NATO and the German Defense Ministry to the effect that it would mean "Germany would play more than a passive role."

The FAZ stresses that such a demand from the U.S. (if confirmed), would place new, serious pressures on German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, who was barely reelected in September—on an program of opposing any war on Iraq—and whose popularity has since plummeted far below that of his Christian Democratic election rivals, as a result of the German economic devolution.

Meantime, with the election of new party leadership in the Green Party, which is the coalition partner of Schroeder's Social Democratic Party, the heat has been turned up on the Chancellor. Although since the election, Schroeder has been trying to mollify the United States for what the U.S. perceives as having been an anti-American election campaign—and one of Schroeder's attempts to put balm on the wound has been his assurance to Washington that the U.S. could use its military bases in Germany and German airspace, in the event of war on Iraq—the new Green leadership has announced it will act to block U.S. use of the bases and airspace.

Schroeder cannot rule without the Greens in his coalition, so speculation is mounting that this "Red-Green coalition" may collapse, to be replaced by a "grand coalition" of the Social Democrats and the rival Christian Democrats.

New German Green Party Leader: U.S. Use of Military Facilities in Iraq War Unconstitutional

At the Dec. 7-8 weekend Green Party convention in Hanover, longtime Green Party defense policy spokeswoman Angelika Beer was elected a party leader, with former party manager Reinhard Buetikofer.

After her election, Beer said she stuck to her 1998 "yes" to NATO military intervention in Kosovo, but Iraq was a different case, as any U.S. military strike without UN mandate would be an unprovoked war of aggression, she charged.

In several interviews in the intervening week, Beer has reiterated as well that Article 26 of the German Constitution bans Germany from any role in wars of aggression, so that the government has no right to grant the U.S. overflight rights, the use of bases, or the deployment of AWACS reconnaissance aircraft with Germans in their crews, in an Iraq-centered theater of war.

Her remarks were echoed by the Social Democrat defense policy spokesman Gernot Erler, who said in an SWR radio interview on Dec. 9, that with the AWACS aircraft deployed against Iraq, Germany would cross the red line drawn by the German Constitution.

Finally, Chancellor Schroeder, under massive pressure, said Dec. 12 on ARD-TV that the German military can form part of the AWACS crews even in wartime. Schroeder said, "The duties of the alliance will be fulfilled, but Germany will not take part in a military intervention." He added that German military personnel could be deployed to protect the area of the NATO alliance (which includes Turkey). "They would be deployed in the alliance area." Regarding the position of Green Party leader Angelika Beer that this would be unconstitutional, Schroeder said, "Mrs. Beer will not have to decide that," adding that he had consulted with German Foreign Minister (and Green Party leader) Joschka Fischer on the matter.

Berlin Aspen Director: Germans Not a Military Partner

The director of the Aspen Institute in Berlin says that the Germans are living on another planet, and can no longer be considered a military partner.

In yet another prominent move of psychological warfare against beleaguered the German government, Jeffrey Gedmin took to the pages of the Leipziger Volkszeitung Dec. 10 to write of Germany as a military partner: "The only thing coming from the German side: keep waiting and drinking tea. This is not a strategy."

In particular, the anti-war resolutions passed by the Greens at their party convention were alienating, he charged. In many questions of strategy, the Germans are living "on a totally different planet," Gedmin wrote, adding that he expects a change of relations between Washington, D.C. and Berlin: "I could imagine that the Americans would no longer consult the Germans on strategic problems. They recognize: The Germans no longer want to do it, or can do it. As far as economic and cultural affairs are concerned, the Germans are partners, but in military affairs, they're not."

Blair Says No Need for Second UN Resolution on Iraq

British Prime Minister Tony Blair told the Financial Times of London that there is no need for a second United Nations resolution authorizing military action if Iraq breaches its obligations to surrender weapons of mass destruction.

Blair claimed that it would be "naive" to think that Saddam Hussein would fully comply with UN demands. He said the "implication" of the UN resolution on Iraq is that "if there is a breach and Saddam doesn't comply, then we are prepared to take actions." He said that he and President George W. Bush wanted to build up the maximum international support for military action and did not rule out a second resolution. But, he added, "I believe that at the heart of that UN resolution is really a deal, let's be frank about it." He said there was a quid pro quo; that if Saddam did the wrong thing, "we are not going to walk away from it."

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