On Thursday 15th Jan. Brian Cowen,T.D, spoke about the Middle East "roadmap".

Referring to International Law, Brian Cowen questioned Israel's avowed commitment to abstention of settlement expansion and to the Roadmap for Peace on a visit to Israel on January 15th. The expansion of settlements contemplated by Arial Sharon has evidently since been given his blessing as new tenders for apartment blocks have been issued. The blocks are all on WestBank and Gaza Strip, Palestinian territory.

As Ireland is presently host and planning an active role in the EU rotating Presidency this undertaking of a two-day visit to Israel was no surprise. Cowen having recently hosted a visit to Ireland by Palestine's Minister of Foreign Affairs is understandbly well informed of the predatory nature of Israel's continued expansion and contravention of their obligations.

The EU at present is more or less forced into a negative mind-set, and under barrage from Israel of accusations of "anti-semitism"- an indictment levelled at almost the entire world, in the event of Israel having to fend off questions on legal and government offenses. A recent assesment of Anti-Semitic complaints throughout the European Union cleared Ireland of any such incidents - so now we can expect to be accused at the slightest inference of protest or legal Government approaches to Middle Eastern affairs.The Roadmap is a USA Government backed package; however, the USA Government have proved that such backing is merely a sop to International protest and goes no further.

Brian Cowen was meeting Ariel Sharon, also the Israeli Foreign Minister and the President Moshe Katsav, and also Peres from the opposition benches.As the express problem is the expansion of settlers, whose domains maybe guarded by Israel Military Defense Forces, but whose raids on Palestinian agricultural land are incessant and frequently totally destructive of the self-support essential to Palestinian well-being, one cannot but wonder at the rumours of settlements where the occupants are moving back into Israel territory, or emigrating from the Middle East altogether. The other matter of the Wall which is also eating into agricultural and water deposits, treasured above all by the Palestinians whose "ration" of water as dictated by Knesset Laws is insufficient, (while Israeli's use water with brazen abandon) and although Cowen has stated that he will return to Israel later this year, it can hardly be supposed that with the EU Constitution battles on hand that Palestine's Irish friends will be able to intervene unless European public protest can effectively lobby for more and certain censure on Israel..

It was reported that Brian Cowen stated of Israel's negative approaches to commitment :"Maybe the initial steps are too steep to be taken in one go."

EU discusses joint submission to The Hague on fence
Jan.27th2004
"The possibility of an agreed EU communication to the court remains under consideration," Irish Foreign Minister Brian Cowen, speaking for Ireland's EU presidency, told reporters. Cowen said the EU was convinced that Israel's construction of the West Bank barrier was a breach of international law
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=387275&contrassID
=1&subContrassID=1&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y

Increasingly Israeli soldiers are stopping us on the street and asking us to identify our religion. How we answer that question determines which streets we are allowed to walk on.Art Gish, Hebron

Autodafe

We take this opportunity to announce the creation of INCA (International Network of Cities of Asylum), a transnational network of solidarity and publishing for writers who have been victims of persecution or censorship.
In 2003, the International Parliament of Writers decided to dissolve itself and to be replaced by the International Network of Cities of Asylum and its magazine, AUTODAFE.
Changing our name enables us to go deeper into the work we started ten years ago with the creation of the IPW, and to return to the sources of our action.
A film about the Cities of Asylum, as well as a book containing texts by the writers to whom we have granted residences, are being produced.

Throughout the year, on AUTODAFE.org, we will keep you posted about our initiatives; we will also put unpublished texts from the Censored Library at your disposal.

You can read already a series of texts dealing with censorship in 2003. From Egypt, Russia, Italy and Spain, Gamal Ghitany, Sonallah Ibrahim, Victor Pelevin, Vincenzo Consolo and Enrique Vila-Matas have drawn up a map of the forbidden zones.

In 2004, the European Commission will no longer support our action in favour of persecuted writers throughout the world, from Chechnya or Cuba, Zimbabwe or Columbia, Iran or Palestine...
More than ever, we need the help of all those, individuals, associations, cities and regions, who feel an affinity with our actions.

UKWAS RIGHT NOT TO JOIN FLAWED EURO., ADMITS JAQUES DELORS

Excerpts THE TIMES, London
Saturday January 17, 2004

By Charles Bremner in Paris and Greg Hurst, Political Correspondent

JACQUES DELORS, the former President of the European Commission, fuelled the
controversy over the euro yesterday by admitting that Britain was justified
in opting out of the single currency because its launch was flawed.

In a remarkably frank interview with The Times, the one-time bogeyman of
Eurosceptics also predicted that Britain would stay out for years, not least
because Gordon Brown was so "passionate about his contempt for Europe".

In another startling admission, the veteran French leftwinger said that the
European Union was in a "state of latent crisis" because of weak leadership.
He blamed member state leaders, including President Chirac of France, for
putting national interests before the common good.

M Delors, 78, also spoke with unexpected admiration of Baroness Thatcher,
his old nemesis. He said that she was a "figure who counts" in British and
European history, and the way her Conservative colleagues dumped her was an
example of the "atrocious" manner in which male politicians treat female
colleagues.

But his most surprising comments were on the euro. He lamented that EU
leaders had failed to heed his warning that monetary union must be matched
with close co-ordination of economic policies, and argued that the euro was
consequently less attractive than it could have been.

"Since we have not succeeded in maximising the economic advantages of the
euro, one can understand the British . . . saying, 'Things are just fine as
they are. Staying out of the euro hasn't stopped us prospering'," he said.

Denis MacShane, the Minister for Europe, said M Delors' comments, vindicated
the Government's "sensible decision . . . to make economic conditions rather
than ideology the central issue as far as the euro is concerned".

But Michael Ancram, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, said: "This is an
extraordinary admission by M Delors. If a champion of European integration
says that the euro hasn't worked, it shows how right Britain has been to
stay out, doubly so if a more harmonised economic policy is proposed as the
way forward. "

M Delors led the Commission for ten years, pushing through both the single
market and the 1991 Maastricht treaty on monetary union, and has just
published his memoirs. He spoke warmly of Britain, though he called its
aversion to Europe "a great mystery of history". But he was sharply critical
of his own country. He deplored the opposition in France to the EU's
imminent enlargement and President Chirac's attempts to lay down the law to
the former Soviet bloc states because of their pro-American leanings.

________________
FULL INTEREVIEW WITH DELORS
________________

THE TIMES Britain

Saturday January 17, 2004

Delors tells Britain: I can see why you reject the euro

By Charles Bremner in Paris

BRITAIN has good reason to feel content outside the euro and will probably
steer clear of the currency for years. That comment would sound banal if it
had not come from Jacques Delors, the former chief of the European
Commission and apostle of monetary union.

At 78, he is as busy as ever preaching his European gospel. Chatting in his
office near the Madeleine church, the old bête noir of Margaret Thatcher has
not suddenly seen the light from across the Channel, but makes the point
while arguing that the Union has lost its way and failed to take advantage
of its single currency.

He said: "Since we have not succeeded in maximising the economic advantages
of the euro, one can understand the British . . . saying: 'Things are just
fine as they are. Staying out of the euro hasn't stopped us prospering'."

He adds that opinion is heavily influenced by Gordon Brown, the Chancellor,
"who is really passionate about his contempt for Europe".

M Delors does not blame Britain more than anyone else for what he sees as
the sorry state of affairs in the Union that he helped to shape during a
decade as President of the Commission. He takes a dim view of President
Chirac's France, as well as Gerhard Schröder's Germany.

The man once reviled by British tabloids as the epitome of the arrogant
Frenchman left Brussels more than eight years ago, but the opinions of the
former Finance Minister still carry weight. In Britain he is best known for
the Sun's celebrated headline "Up Yours Delors", in the run-up to
Maastricht, which he quotes with amusement in his book. For the French, M
Delors, a self educated former bank clerk, is still the Hamlet who did not
want to be President.

In 1994 he rejected Socialist pleas to stand as a candidate against Jacques
Chirac when polls were rating him as favourite. In the book he also reveals
that he refused requests from the late President Mitterrand to serve as
Prime Minister in the 1980s and 1990s.

In a rudderless Union believers yearn for the dynamic Delors reign, which
saw the birth of the single market and monetary union, a far cry from the
stagnation of today's Commission, which has been sidelined under his
successors, Jacques Santer and Romano Prodi.

The passion for Europe still shines through M Delors's quiet, almost shy,
manner as he reviews the state of the Union from Notre Europe, the
think-tank he founded after Brussels. John Major's autobiography sits in a
bookcase. Victorian political cartoons hang above his desk. Baroness
Thatcher's memoirs are on his shelf at home, he says.

Europe is in a "state of latent crisis" because it lacks leadership, he
says. "The men who took Europe forward had three qualities: vision, heart
and a strategic realism. Today these are in short supply."

Things began unravelling after the 1991 Maastricht treaty and the decision
to launch economic and monetary union. In his newly published memoirs he
tells how EU leaders turned a deaf ear to his argument that a single
currency needed closely harmonised economic policies. For this reason he
thinks that the 1992 single market was his chief legacy, not the euro.

The Union had fallen into disarray as leaders fought for national interests
and the public lost faith in politicians and the European ideal. While
observing old-fashioned decorum, M Delors takes issue with M Chirac's
heavy-handed dealings with Europe, including his swipes against Poland and
the other pro-American new members from the East.

France, with its sputtering economy, is no longer much good as a European
"social model" either, he says.

M Delors has lost none of his enthusiasm for federation. He defines this
carefully as the pooling of sovereignty among nation states. He was never
after a "European superstate", he insists. "I have always been criticised by
hardline federalists who think I am too pragmatic. I never wanted or
believed in the disappearance of the nation."

Like M Chirac, he believes that la Grande Europe of 25 can recover momentum
by creating "avant garde" groups of members who want more integration. M
Delors talks with surprising warmth of Britain, although he says that he has
never fathomed why the country is so "allergic" to the EU.

"It is not just about the special relationship with the US," he says.
"There's just something in the people . . . It is a great mystery of
history," adding pragmatically that there was no point in criticising
Britain for its nature. "Asking Britain to distance itself much from the US
is like asking someone to cut off an arm or a leg." Tony Blair comes in for
praise for shaking up left-wing thinking on the economy and cutting
unemployment. He depicts Mr Major as a colourless operator after the power
of Margaret Thatcher, of whom he talks with admiration. The Iron Lady did
battle with him from the start, but she was an intellectual power and always
fair.

"I have nothing to complain about with Mrs Thatcher. I always tried to have
useful conversations with her," he said. "There were tense moments, but I
admired her original analysis of Britain's decline and her economic
knowledge. In the book I write with deference to her because she is a figure
who counts in Britain's and Europe's history."

He added: "At the end of her premiership, Mrs Thatcher appeared to go to
pieces. Her ousting by the Tories, while on a trip to Paris, was an example
of the atrocious way in which male politicians treat female colleagues. It
is tough for a woman in politics. They would never have done that to a man."

M Delors knows the subject because Martine Aubry, 52, his daughter, has come
in for her share of vitriol in her career as a Socialist Cabinet Minister,
and currently Mayor of Lille.

M Delors blames himself, in part, for Mrs Thatcher's downfall, citing his
controversial speech at the Bournemouth TUC congress of 1988, when he was
accused of interfering in British politics. However, he adds: "It was not so
much the blows from me that lost it for Mrs Thatcher as her constant
under-estimation of the European dynamic."

He also recalls that he warned Mr Major, then Chancellor, that he had set a
sterling rate that was too high to survive when Britain joined the European
Monetary System. The result was the inevitable "catastrophe", the pound's
withdrawal in 1992.

Musing on his poor image in Britain, M Delors says that he was the victim of
groundless accusations. "I have great respect for the country, which showed
us an example during the war.

"One of my great regrets from those years was not to have been able to have
good discussions with everyone. Perhaps it was because of my deficient
English."

RELUCTANT GERMANY? NOT SO

The common American reaction to the "reluctance" of Germany to engage with the USA in the War in Iraq shows a serious lack of understanding of both History and the world at large. Most Americans believe that Germany some how "owes us one" after two world wars, and should have sent their military to fight right along with the Brits and the Yanks and the Aussies.

This was impossible for Germany to do, even had they wanted to. In the first place, the German Constitution, drafted in part by the USA and Britain and designed to keep Germany from re-building their military on a scale that might allow them to start yet another world war, only ALLOWS for a volunteer DEFENSIVE force. Its members are not trained for combat in foreign countries, nor is it equipped to do so either in manpower, equipment or funds. Most of what the German military is equipped with is old, 15 years or older. They have NO transport planes, for example! How would they get to Iraq? Air Israel?

BUT, these same solders who are not allowed to fight ARE in Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Serbia and others seriously troubled areas. Why are they there and what are they doing? Re-building schools, churches, damns, hospitals, homes power suppliers that have been destroyed by others bombs and guns. They provide defence for ethnic minorities under threat from their neighbours. 185,000 of them are out there, doing the grunt work so that the Brits and the Yanks can get on with the job they are trained to do best. Search and Destroy.

So the next time you hear someone say the Germans are cowards, lazy, unhelpful, you tell them they are wrong. They have chosen to rise above their history and become a force for reconstruction, not destruction.

Trina Juestel
American Citizen/Aussie by Choice
Carnarvon
Western Australia
From News Report news-report@wiretapped.net