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THE HANDSTAND |
AUGUST 2003 |
 A wolf in wolf's clothing
Monday, July 21, 2003 - Page A11 Over the
past few weeks, the Bush administration has made a show
of moderating its stridently unilateralist foreign policy
-- it has asked the UN to legitimize its occupation of
Iraq; requested the help of foreign troops to police its
newest possession; and invited German Foreign Minister
Joschka Fischer (whose government opposed the invasion)
to Washington for talks. Sadly, these hard-core foreign friends of the U.S. are whistling in the wind, for all evidence points to the contrary. This administration is more narrow-minded, more ideologically driven, more hostile to international cooperation than any since Ronald Reagan's first term, back when the Cold War still raged. Such
Reagan-era behaviour has resurfaced most recently in the
administration's opposition to the appointment of a
veteran Swedish diplomat, Pierre Schori, as head of the
UN's Interim Administration for Kosovo. It is no small
irony that the erudite and engaging Mr. Schori, currently
Sweden's ambassador to the UN, is another dedicated
Atlanticist who frequently goes out of his way to say
nice things about the U.S. But nobody
in George W. Bush's Washington cares to remember these
details of Swedish diplomatic history. Bad enough that
"non-aligned" Sweden has a long tradition of
opposing U.S. foreign policy, especially over the war in
Vietnam and nuclear brinksmanship with the Soviet Union.
To the current Bushites, the greater sin of Swedes such
as Mr. Schori was to confront the U.S. over its murderous
proxy war in Central America during the 1980s, when Mr.
Reagan's ideologues viewed tiny, enfeebled Nicaragua as
the greatest Marxist threat to the world since Lenin
boarded the train in Zurich bound for St. Petersburg. From this grew Mr. Reagan's overt and covert support of the Nicaraguan contras, his tacit support of right-wing death squads in Guatemala and El Salvador, and his establishment of a huge U.S. military presence in undemocratic but relatively peaceful Honduras. It's no coincidence that two of Mr. Schori's chief antagonists over his Kosovo appointment are Elliot Abrams and John Negroponte, both of whom held key posts in the Reagan State Department. As assistant secretary of state for Inter-American Affairs (and, incredibly, for "Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs"), Mr. Abrams was a ferocious overseer of the Central American carnage wrought in large measure by his government; as ambassador to Honduras, Mr. Negroponte acted as U.S. pro-consul for the whole region. No matter to the present administration that Mr. Abrams pleaded guilty in 1991 to two counts of withholding information from Congress during its investigation of Mr. Reagan's secret and illegal funding of the contras; he is now Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Democracy, Human Rights, and International Operations at the National Security Council. No matter that Mr. Negroponte has been accurately described by journalist Stephen Kinzer as "a great fabulist" who "professed to see a Honduras almost Scandinavian in its tranquility, a place where there were no murderous generals, no death squads, no political prisoners, no clandestine jails or cemeteries"; he now presides as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Imagine Mr. Abrams' and Mr. Negroponte's annoyance when Sweden, embodied by Mr. Schori and his compatriot Hans Blix, reappeared to impede American ambitions in Iraq. Thus the world is turned upside-down: Once publicly scorned, Mr. Abrams and Mr. Negroponte today intimidate the UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan; they vindictively block the appointment of a decent, intelligent diplomat to a thankless, difficult job -- in a region where neither oil nor any other strategic U.S. interest is at stake. UN sources tell me that Mr. Annan has already caved in to U.S. opposition to Mr. Schori, although he has not officially announced his decision to discard his own (and the European Union's) preferred candidate. This is in spite of the fact that the Kosovo post is reserved for a European, and that the choice is entirely Mr. Annan's to make. * John R. MacArthur is publisher of Harper's Magazine. BERLUSCONI DISASSOCIATING HIMSELF FROM EUROPEAN UNION POLICY : Palestinian PM Mahmoud Abbas to visit EU president Italy Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbaswill make his first official visit to a EuropeanUnion country with a trip to Italy next month. Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, has requested an audience with Pope John Paul and plans to meet Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi on the August 25-26 visit. Abbas held talks with U.S. President George Bush at the White House last Friday in an effort to push on with a U.S.-backed Middle East peace plan. Italy, which holds the rotating presidency of the European Union has said Middle East peace- making is one of the central planks of its foreign policy agenda during its presidency. Berlusconi has adopted a line close to the USA, which has sought to isolate Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat from diplomatic efforts. Berlusconi's stance conflicts with the EU's stated policy of keeping lines open to Arafat. The European Union, Russia and the United States are all part of the "Quartet" sponsoring the "road map" for Middle East peace that aims to see a Palestinian state created by 2005 Excerpt from REUTERS ..EU Court
whistleblower sacked Dougal Watt, the Scottish whistleblower who made
public his allegations of high-level corruption in the EU
Court of Auditors has been sacked, the Glasgow Herald
reported today. Dougal Watt’s claims also implicated
the Commission and the EU's anti-fraud office, OLAF
(Photo: Court of Auditors)
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