In this issue:

Pro-Chickenhawk Current in CDU Shapes New Foreign-Policy Paper

Schröder's 'Agenda 2010' Draws Fire From Labor, SPD

German Labor Begins Broad Mobilization vs. Agenda 2010

Schröder Faces Mounting Opposition from SPD/Labor Constituencies

BueSo Banner at Central May Day Rally Shown on German TV

Labor's May Day Rallies Lack Policy for Ending Economic Depression

Czechia Breaks with Rumsfeld's 'Gang of 8' in Europe

Pope, in Spain, Appeals for Peace

Big 'No' to Blair Forecast for Municipal Elections in Britain

Brussels 'Defense 4' Summit Initiates New European Defense Institutions

Italy's Berlusconi Losing Domestic Political Control

Italy Will Send an Imperial Auxiliary Force to Iraq

From Volume 2, Issue Number 18 of Electronic Intelligence Weekly, Published May 5, 2003

Western European News Digest

Pro-Chickenhawk Current in CDU Shapes New Foreign-Policy Paper

Overseen by former CDU party chairman Wolfgang Schäuble, and significantly influenced by such German "Straussians" as Friedbert Pflueger (who arranged CDU Chairman Angela Merkel's scandalous U.S. trip at the end of February), the CDU national executive issued a new policy paper April 28, on the "Foreign Policy Interests of Germany."

The paper pays lip service to the "no" to any form of unilateralism, but its authors drop their masks with their attack on the Schröder government's "no" to the Iraq war, as allegedly to blame for the "fateful inaction of the United Nations in the Iraq conflict." The paper also criticizes France and Germany, by stating that Franco-German cooperation must never be more than a function of the trans-Atlantic partnership, i.e., proceed in the context of the Bush Administration's agenda. "Any attempt to unite Europe against the USA, is doomed to failure. He who wants to position Europe against America, is dividing Europe."

The authors drop their last mask, when calling on Germany to link up to the "questions underlying the new American security strategy," namely, to recognize the alleged necessity to redefine the traditional "principles of state sovereignty, territorial integrity, and the intervention ban of international law." These principles no longer apply to the new challenges and threats, and "international law has to be carefully transformed," the authors state." It fits in the picture that Schäuble and Pflueger are among the most vehement critics of the recent St. Petersburg summit of France, Germany, and Russia, as well as of today's Brussels "Defense 4" summit of France, Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg—all four being governments against the Iraq War.

Schröder's 'Agenda 2010' Draws Fire From Labor, SPD

German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder says his critics will not change his agenda; if they block it, he "will have to draw personal consequences." The statement, issued before emergency sessions of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) executive in Berlin April 28, is widely read as yet another threat to resign from office, with the aim of armtwisting his SPD critics.

The first response from the labor unions has been a hardening of resistance: Metal Workers Union chairman Klaus Zwickel wrote an "open letter" to the SPD and Green Party Bundestag members, denouncing Schröder's Agenda 2010 as a policy that would lower living and welfare standards. The only exception, is the passage in Schröder's Agenda that calls for increased credit to Mittelstand (small and medium-sized) firms, because that alone will help to increase employment, Zwickel wrote. He urged SPD Bundestag members not to pass an agenda that is being dictated to them by the government, but to make sure that changes occur in that agenda.

German Labor Begins Broad Mobilization vs. Agenda 2010

German labor unions will begin a broader mobilization against Chancellor Schröder's "Agenda 2010": The week beginning May 12 will feature protest events, inside and outside factories, of especially the metal workers (in 170 cities) but also other labor unions, throughout Germany. What the unions are campaigning for, is a mixed bag of proposals for a property tax, a capital gains tax, and a public-sector investment offensive focused on municipal infrastructure—the latter aspect being the more reasonable among these.

The campaign in Germany will correspond to similar days of action in Austria, in labor protest against government plans for a pension reform; and a nationwide day of action of labor unions in France May 13. Also in Italy, Belgium, and the Netherlands, labor unions are expected to stage protests, and may strike, during the month of May.

Conceptually, all those mobilizations are rather limited, however, and require interventions like those coming from the LaRouche movement.

Nationwide, the SPD continues losing constituencies, with polls showing support below 30%. The same polls show, however, that even after the Iraq war, in spite of heavy media propaganda promoting acceptance of the "postwar realities," 74% of Germans still are against the war, view it as illegitimate, and are backing the Chancellor on his anti-war position.

Schröder Faces Mounting Opposition from SPD/Labor Constituencies

Among other arm-twisting efforts, German Chancellor Schröder hopes to be able to call his inner-party critics back to discipline, through four big regional conventions. Each of these conventions has been designed to rally between 4,000 and 5,000 SPD party officials. But the first one, which was held in Bonn April 28, only attracted 700—and this, in Nordrhein-Westphalia, Germany's biggest state, which also has 25% of the entire SPD party membership.

Concerning the labor movement, which largely overlaps with the SPD constituencies, the Chancellor faces a much harsher tone of opposition: for example, the metal workers of Frankfurt/Main had launched a motion to get Schröder disinvited from the central labor federation (DGB) May 1 rally in Neu-Ansbach. The DGB did not disinvite Schröder, but DGB chairman Michael Sommer is expected to deliver a speech which will look quite different from the one which the Chancellor will deliver, at that event.

"The scene is one of increasing unrest among labor, which has not really burst into the open, yet," a labor union official from Saxony told EIR April 29. "Our members are deeply frustrated, and they would certainly not challenge the government directly at this moment, but that can change, over the coming weeks," the official said. "The situation is somewhat like the spring of 1996, when unrest was building among labor unions, and there were only smaller protest actions at that time, which the government [then, Chancellor Helmut Kohl of the CDU—ed.] did not take seriously," the labor official said. "But in the autumn, we had a very big strike at Daimler-Benz, and this escalated into the big protest wave of the spring of 1997 [when mine workers marched to Bonn, steel workers to Frankfurt—ed.], if you recall that." He said he did not imply it would be the same this time, but something like that could develop, over a period of several months.

BueSo Banner at Central May Day Rally Shown on German TV

Reporting on the event at neu-Ansbach (near Frankfurt/Main), at which Chancellor Gerhard Schröder encountered massive and loud manifestation of discontent from the audience, N-TV, a major German television channel, for a few seconds showed the BueSo (Civil Rights Solidarity Movement) banner: "Helga Zepp-LaRouche fuer Lautenbach-Plan."

Labor's May Day Rallies Lack Policy for Ending Economic Depression

The overall turnout of labor unionists, supporters, and protesters was higher than at rallies a year ago, but this is not to be mistaken as a sign of increased strength of labor.

Apart from the fact that speeches given by labor leaders were rightly polemicizing against the German government's Agenda 2010 budget-cutting project, they did not indicate any farther-looking concepts, except calls for increased property taxes to fund labor-market and investment programs. For example, public-sector labor union chairman Frank Bsirske, at the rally in Hamburg, called for a public sector investment program in the range of 20 billion euros annually—but financed, to a large extent, through extra income from property taxes.

At least, calls for a suspension of aspects of the Maastricht criteria were issued at some of the rallies, yesterday.

Czechia Breaks with Rumsfeld's 'Gang of 8' in Europe

Czech Prime Minister Vladimir Spidla and Foreign Minister Cyril Svoboda openly disagreed with former President Vaclav Havel's endorsement of the Bush-Blair war initiative, when it was made public. Meanwhile, as of early April, the Czech Republic had a new President, Vaclav Klaus, one of whose first acts in office, was to summon U.S. Ambassador Craig Stapleton to tell him to "take the Czech Republic off that list" of war supporters. Stapleton is married into the Bush family, which makes this affair even more interesting.

Soon after, Klaus told an interviewer for the daily, Lidove Noviny, that he would not be convinced if the U.S. found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, because it might well be the Americans had planted them. On May 3, in an interview with Germany's Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Klaus added another slap in the face to the Bush Administration, and especially Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, when asked about options for stationing U.S. troops in Czechia. He replied, "Because of our history, we are very sensitive when it comes to foreign troops on our territory. I think another stationing of foreign troops would not be welcome. I do not understand, either, what military significance such bases should have."

None of that means, however, that Klaus is in favor of the Franco-German anti-war team: In the same interview, he reiterates his "no" to the "Brussels 4" initiative of France, Germany, Belgium, and Luxembourg, on grounds that it would undermine NATO. On that, Klaus is in line with the Polish government, except that Poles are expected to grant the U.S. military bases and stationing of troops.

This just shows that the European terrain, including especially in eastern Europe, is rather complicated. There are no easy solutions for Bush-Blair, nor for Chirac-Schröder, and for the latter two, there is still a lot of work to do, especially in economic terms, to consolidate European unity.

Pope, in Spain, Appeals for Peace

Pope John Paul II, on his 99th foreign trip since the beginning of his pontificate, told an enthusiastic crowd of young people, estimated to be 600,000, at a Spanish airbase outside Madrid, "The spiral of violence, terrorism and war causes, even in our day, hatred and death. Your response to blind violence and inhuman hate should be the fascinating power of love. Conquer enmity with the force of forgiveness."

One million people were expected to attend the Sunday mass May 4, at which the Pope will elevate five Spaniards to sainthood, including a priest who died in the Spanish Civil War in 1936. The New York Times noted, in coverage prior to the Pope's departure for Spain, that he seems less "feeble" than he had previously, and that during a flurry of public appearances in April, he spoke with such clarity against the war in Iraq that European journalists had proclaimed a papal "renaissance." Quite a contrast to a year or so ago, when the news media were waiting for him to die.

Big 'No' to Blair Forecast for Municipal Elections in Britain

Municipal elections in Britain May 1 were expected to feature a massive "no" to Blair, with big losses for Labour, the German daily Frankfurter Algemeine Zeitung reported. British media have returned to covering the highly controversial domestic issues, such as Blair's failure on public health, the disaster at the schools, and in the railway system. According to "postwar" opinion polls, 62% of Britons think that Blair shows no concern about the real, pressing issues of domestic policies; only 34% of Britons believe the government is not lying to them all the time, whereas 66% believe it is lying to them all or most or a lot of the time. Only 35% view Blair's government as competent on economics.

Frustration within the Labour Party is so big that it has failed to field a candidate for 30% of the 10,500 city council members seats up for election on May 1. Especially in Wales, less than 30% of the eligible voters plan to cast their ballots, anyway. Voter apathy is the main enemy of Labour, now. And, "the other Tony" is attracting much more public interest: This is Tony Collins, a man who recently had to spend 77 hours in the hallway of a hospital because there was no bed or room for him, there. His case has been broadly covered by the media, as indicative of the health system's disaster.

Most alarming for British policy-making elites is, however, that popular discontent is not favoring the opposition Tories, either, which implies that if Blair continued to collaborate with the Tories to compensate for Labour's opposition in Parliament, he may be no better off, in the long run.

Brussels 'Defense 4' Summit Initiates New European Defense Institutions

At their meeting in the Belgian capital April 29, the leaders of the European Union's "Defense Four"—France, Germany, Belgium and Luxemburg—resolved that, by the summer of 2004, a military-planing center will be set up on the outskirts of Brussels, "for operational planning and command of EU-led operations without recourse to NATO assets" emphasis added).

This decision, and the other summit decisions on the formation of a European intervention force, centered around the already-existing Franco-German Brigade, and on the creation of an air-transport command by June 2004, are certain to enrage the hardcore Atlanticists of NATO. Many of these have over the past days vehemently attacked the "Franco-German conspiracy against NATO" (as they put it), including Tony Blair in an interview with the Financial Times April 28 against the "Franco-German position." Instead of the multipolar world, which France and Germany want, Blair poses his idea of "one polar power but which encompasses a strategic partnership between Europe and America and other countries, too—Russia, China—where we are trying to ensure that we develop, as I say, a common global agenda."

Italy's Berlusconi Losing Domestic Political Control

As a result of his pro-war stance, agreement with the government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has fallen off, among Italian elites as well as in the population, so that traditional conflicts issues have now become more lethal for Berlusconi's political survival. Typical of this, is the effect of the final sentencing of Berlusconi's former Defense Minister Cesare Previti to 11 years in prison in a corruption trial indirectly involving Berlusconi himself. Berlusconi has accused the trial judges of being "coup-plotters," thus reopening an old institutional conflict. But whereas, still one year ago, Berlusconi could convince Italian public opinion that he was a victim of a judicial conspiracy, now many of those who voted for him might not believe him any longer, writes establishment figure Sergio Romano in Corriere della Sera's editorial May 1. "This crisis," Romano writes, "will have inevitable effects on Italy's credibility, in one of the gravest international moments since the end of the Cold War."

Italy Will Send an Imperial Auxiliary Force to Iraq

Following a meeting with Toni Blair in London April 30, Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi confirmed that Italy will send a military police force to be stationed in Basra, under British command. In addition to the Blair-Berlusconi meeting, another meeting took place in London the same day, among military representatives of all countries which will play an imperial auxiliary role, in which the head of the Italian Interforce Operation Command participated, too.

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