[Culturechat] "We certainly have seen the results of appeasement"

[WesTexas@aol.com]

>From News Reports: 

In a weekend meeting of German and Czech officials in Munich, the Czech 
Republic's foreign minister, Cyril Svoboda, recalled the Munich agreement of 
1938, when Czechoslovakia was sold out to the Nazis by Western Europe, and 
warned of the consequences of appeasing a totalitarian regime. The same 
suggestion to appeasement, with its implicit linking of Iraq and a part of 
Europe, was made more directly on Monday by President Vaira Vike-Freiberga of 
Latvia, an EU and NATO candidate.

Commenting on the different attitudes in Europe after the massive anti-war 
marches over the weekend, she said of Latvia's post-World War II occupation 
by the Soviet Union, "We certainly have seen the results of appeasement. It's 
much easier to tolerate a dictator when he's dictating over somebody else's 
life and not your own."

The continental rift over Iraq widened sharply Tuesday after East European 
candidates for European Union membership reacted indignantly to advice from 
President Jacques Chirac of France to pipe down on the subject or risk losing 
their chance to join Europe's most powerful economic and political club.

"We thought we were preparing for war with Saddam Hussein and not Jacques 
Chirac," said Alexander Vondar, deputy foreign minister of the Czech 
Republic, one of the EU applicants that have drawn French ire by openly 
supporting the United States and Britain in the Iraqi crisis. Vondar said his 
country and its immediate neighbors "definitely cannot remain silent," as 
Chirac advised Monday.

Adam Rotfeld, deputy foreign minister of Poland, the largest of the EU 
candidates, said, "France has a right to define its own policy and we have to 
respect it," but he added that France must offer the same respect to Poland.

Chirac, in an unusual outburst to reporters in Brussels after a contentious 
emergency EU summit meeting Monday on Iraq, derided those Central and East 
European countries that have signed letters expressing their support for the 
United States as "childish," "dangerous" and missing "an opportunity to shut 
up."

He went on to suggest that opposing France and Germany could hurt candidates 
for EU membership.

"When you are in the family," Chirac said, "you have more rights than when 
you are asking to join and knocking on the door."

He warned that Romania and Bulgaria, the poorest of the 10 candidates to the 
15-member bloc, "could hardly find a better way" of reducing their chances 
for membership by speaking up against France.

The war of words heightened tension between the two sides as leaders of the 
European Union aspirants arrived Tuesday in Brussels for a briefing on the 
emergency summit meeting, which they were not invited to attend despite 
appeals by Britain and Spain.

That tension has grown steadily as Central and East European countries have 
sided with the United States over how to resolve the Iraq crisis.

France and Germany have resisted the American push for military action, 
leading the U.S. defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, last month to chastise 
the two as "old Europe," out of step with the "new Europe" made up of former 
Soviet bloc countries. The divide broke into the open when eight European 
leaders, including those from EU candidates Poland, Hungary and the Czech 
Republic, signed a letter of support for Washington's position in January.

That letter was followed by another signed by 10 countries, including seven 
EU candidates.

The controversy has highlighted France's ambivalence toward the European 
Union's enlargement, which it has long feared would weaken the Europe's power 
on the world stage, or at least weaken France's ability to dominate it.

Jacques Rupnik, a leading French expert on Central and Eastern Europe, said 
the French were beginning to feel that they perhaps ought not to have let the 
Easterners join the EU after all.

"There is a lot of irritation in France about the alignment of the candidates 
toward the U.S. position," said Rupnik, adding there is suspicion in France 
that the poorer European countries are attracted only by EU economic support 
but that "for the serious stuff they address themselves to Washington."

Differences papered over

In the end, the two sides united Tuesday behind a hard-fought declaration 
warning Iraq that it has one last chance to disarm, papering over the 
acrimonious dispute, The Associated Press reported from Brussels.

The joint declaration agreed to by the present EU members Monday night and 
endorsed Tuesday by the future members warns Iraq that it must disarm "fully 
and completely."

They agreed to give UN weapons inspectors more time, but set no deadlines and 
asserted that "war is not inevitable," a concession to France and Germany, 
which have long sought a peaceful resolution to the crisis.

"We had extensive, very effective and constructive consultations and we have 
reached an agreement," on the EU summit declaration, said Prime Minister 
Costas Simitis of Greece, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency.

But the Chirac tirade demonstrated the limits of the declaration in achieving 
a united front.

"It is not really responsible behavior," Chirac told reporters Monday just 
after the EU issued its declaration on Iraq. "It is not well-brought-up 
behavior. They missed a good opportunity to keep quiet."

Britain and Germany defended the future members' right to express their own 
opinions, a blow to French aspirations to be one of the primary architects of 
European foreign policy. Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain made clear his 
disagreement with Simitis's decision excluding the new members from the 
emergency summit meeting on Monday. "They have as much right to speak up as 
Great Britain or France or any other member of the European Union today," 
Blair said in London.