stop press stop
press stop press
Marta Andreasen
nominated for Accountancy Age award
Marta Andreasen, the European Commission's former
chief accountant, is one of the six nominated by
Accountancy Age for the much-coveted title of Personality
of the Year.
Accountancy Age is a leading news and information title
for accounting and finance professionals.
The Spanish accountant has proved a real thorn in the
side of the European Commission. In 2002, she was
suspended from her post as chief accountant after
publicly declaring that the Commission's accounts were
faulty and open to fraud and abuse.
The Awards, attended by some 800 people will be presented
at the Annual Gala Dinner and Presentation Evening on
Wednesday 12 November at Battersea Park Arena in London.
The winner is elected via an online poll.
Among the other candidates for the prize are William
McDonough, chairman of the new US audit watchdog, the
Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, and Peter
Wyman, president of the Institute of Chartered
Accountants, the UK's 120,000-member professional
accounting body.
October 20th Jenin - The West
Bank city of Jenin and its refugee camp are suffering
from acute water shortage after the Zionist enemy forces
destroyed the water network in the area. Walid
Abu Muweis the municipality chief in the city said that
Jenin was suffering from acute shortage of water supplies
as a result of the “”Israeli” destruction
of the main pipeline to the west of the city four days
ago.
He said that occupation tanks destroyed the pipeline on
the Jenin-Haifa road, noting that the Zionist authorities
had turned down several requests to repair the damage.
Abu Muweis said that repair teams were being denied
access to the damage by the occupation troops besieging
the city for almost a month and a half. Thousands of
families have been deprived of water supplies for the
fourth day running, the municipal official said,
expressing conviction that the Zionist measure was
deliberate to tighten the siege on inhabitants of the
city.
He also warned of serious health hazards and environment
pollution after occupation forces blocked the road to
main garbage dump near the village of Qabatya. He noted
that the occupation forces banned movement of trucks
carrying garbage from reaching the main dump since the
last curfew on the city was imposed 12 days ago.
The municipality chief called for pressuring on
“Israel” into solving the problems of water and
garbage immediately.
© Copyright 2003 by
palestine-info.co.uk Oct 20, 2003, 10:26
Palestinian Minister
Abed Rabbo: PA endorses the 'Swiss Accord'
Haaretz (Oct.13/03)
Below are the major points of the Accord. To view the
whole report, go to:
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/349354.html
* The Palestinians will concede the right of
return. Some refugees will remain in the countries
where they now live, others will be absorbed
by the PA, some will be absorbed by other
countries and some will receive financial
compensation. A limited number will be
allowed to settle in Israel, but this will not be defined
as realization of the right of return.
* The Palestinians will recognize Israel as the
state of the Jewish people.
* Israel will withdraw to the 1967 borders, except for
certain territorial exchanges,
as decribed below.
* Jerusalem will be divided, with Arab neighborhoods of
East Jerusalem becoming part of the Palestinian state.
Jewish neighborhoods of East Jerusalem, as well as the
West Bank suburbs of Givat Ze'ev, Ma'aleh Adumim and the
historic part of Gush Etzion - but not Efrat - will be
part of Israel.
* The Temple Mount will be Palestinian, but an
international force will ensure freedom of access for
visitors of all faiths. However, Jewish prayer
will not be permitted on the mount, nor will
archaeological digs. The Western Wall will remain under
Jewish sovereignty and the "Holy Basin" will be
under international supervision.
* The settlements of Ariel, Efrat and Har Homa will be
part of the Palestinian state. In addition, Israel will
transfer parts of the Negev adjacent to Gaza, but not
including Halutza, to the Palestinians in exchange for
the parts of the West Bank it will receive.
* The Palestinians will pledge to prevent terror
and incitement and disarm all militias. Their state will
be demilitarized, and border crossings will be supervised
by an international, but not Israeli, force.
* The agreement will replace all UN resolutions and
previous agreements.
---------------
Arab
Americans' use of different media channels,
Forwarded to
the Media Monitors: Dear Friends
I am an Assistant Professor of Communication
and Media Studies at California State
University, San Bernardino. I'm also finishing my
dissertation on Arab Americans' use of different media
channels, including the Internet, with The University of
Memphis in Tennessee. When I started collecting the
literature review, I realized that there was very little
published literature, if nothing, on Arab Americans in
the communication field. I have an enthusiastic research
agenda on Arab Americans and I would like you all to
cooperate with me and support me. If you are an Arab
American (not necessarily citizen but permanent resident
of the United States), you can assist me
by completing an online survey questionnaire (www.people.memphis.edu/~rinad/consentform=
.htm) that will not take more than
20-25 minutes of your precious time. The participation
will be anonymous and there will be nothing to identify
you personally. The data collected will be highly
confidential and viewed by myself alone for the purpose
of the study solely. The higher my response rate, the
higher the credibility and reliability of my results will
be. I am planning on publishing my work upon its
completion. I will try also to present it at academic
conventions. For my participants, I will publish my work
on my website, so you are welcome to read it and
provide me with your feedback once it is ready.
I would really appreciate your participation and
forwarding this message to all of your e-mailing lists
and listservs. Please notify me (Ahlam11@aol.com) of any problems you
may face with accessing the online
questionnaire, filling it out, or sending it online. If
you have any comments or suggestions, you are welcome to
share them with me. Thank you.
Yours,Ahlam Muhtaseb,Assistant Professor Communication
Studies Department
California State University, San Bernardino.
5500 University Parkway, San Bernardino, CA 92407
(619)584-0233
.........................................................................................................................
UN to debate separation fence today
The request for the session was initiated by the
Palestine Liberation Organization and was followed by an
official request from the Arab member-states. The meeting
will be the first time the UN addresses the issue of the
fence.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/348450.html
*******************************
Israel accused of starving West
Bank
From: http://www.gulf-news.com/Articles/news.asp?ArticleID=99397
New York - By Charles Laurence and Kim Willsher
05-10-2003
A United Nations report which blames Israel for causing
starvation in Gaza and the West Bank has prompted a
furious diplomatic row with the Israeli government of
Ariel Sharon. The leaked report by Jean Ziegler, a Swiss
sociologist and UN special envoy, blames Israel's
security policies for "collective punishment"
of the Palestinians. Ziegler spent 10 days in the
occupied territories in July and was due to present his
report to the UN General Assembly in New York on November
18.
Furious Israeli officials, however, have denounced the
report as "highly political", saying that
Ziegler had gone beyond his mandate. With support from
American diplomats at the UN, Israel has called for the
report to be rejected before it reaches the floor of the
Assembly, and asked the UN Human Rights Commission, for
whom Ziegler was working as a food rights specialist, to
discipline him.
According to newspaper reports in France, Ziegler's
report will not now be published until the spring.
Tuvia Israeli, Israel's deputy representative to the UN,
said: "Ziegler's behaviour has been a bitter blow to
our relations with the UN which were already extremely
strained." He said that Ziegler's silence about the
rampant corruption at the heart of the Palestinian
Authority was unacceptable. Privately, UN officials in
Geneva, where the Human Rights Commission is based, also
expressed frustration at having "wasted a golden
opportunity" to improve cooperation with the Israeli
government. They regretted that Ziegler had been
"carried away by his indignation".Ziegler
appeared yesterday ready to lock horns with the UN.
"It is a very explosive report about the silent
tragedy behind the visible tragedy of the Palestinian
territories," he said.
In the 25-page report, a copy of which has been seen by
The Sunday Telegraph, Mr Ziegler says 22 per cent of
Palestinian children under the age of five suffer severe
malnutrition, and most families have only one meal a day.
He describes that as "absurd" in a historically
fertile land, blaming the "apartheid" security
fence, the seizing and destruction of Palestinian
farmland, and roadblocks for preventing food from
reaching Palestinian communities."The Occupied
Palestinian Territories is on the verge of humanitarian
catastrophe as a result of the extremely harsh military
measures imposed by the occupying Israeli military forces
since the outbreak of the second Intifada in September
2000," the report warns.
Ziegler became one of the first UN envoys to be allowed
to report on conditions in the occupied territories with
co-operation and assistance from Israel.Israel wants the
report to be dismissed on technical grounds, claiming
that Ziegler breached protocol because the report was
leaked to the French newspaper, Liberation, before their
government had a chance to lodge a reaction.
Ziegler defended his report yesterday as "the
truth" and said the leak had been beyond his
control. He said that the draft report had been sent to
Israeli agencies that had helped his research at the same
time as it was submitted to the Human Rights Commission.
*************************
From THE NEWS REPORT Quote of the day:
According to retired Colonel David Hackworth over 50% of
the Army females in Iraq have been sent home pregnant.
Thus the American army has now achieved something never
before accomplished in military history -- a 50% casualty
rate without combat! -- WRW David Hackworth
Forwarded by Martin Webster
------------------------------------------
*************************************
World
Depleted/Uranium Weapons Conference in Hamburg planned
HEINRICH BUECKER,
Marion Kuepker
Al-Jazeerah, 10/9/03
We are preparing a World
Uranium Weapons Conference to do work on a new and in
some ways more prevalent and immediate nuclear threat:
the issue of organizing an international campaign seeking
the official ban of uranium weapons and their
classification as weapons of mass destruction.
For some years activists
have faced the problem that the U.S. and British
government are producing and upgrading their weapon
systems containing uranium. With these also-radioactive
weapons the boundaries between conventional and nuclear
weapons becomes completely obscured.
The uranium isotope used
in DU has a half-life of 4.5 billion years. DU and other
uranium weapons are weapons with indiscriminate effects,
causing genetic damage and by this endangering over
generations the human race as a whole. Articles 35 and 56
of the Geneva Convention clearly prohibit weapons which
are this indiscriminate and catastrophic in their effects
on civilian populations, suggesting that their use could
legally constitute war crimes.
The governments using DU
ammunition deny the link of these weapons with the
illnesses and are lobbying hard to make a large,
scientifically credible inquiry in Iraq impossible. They
even try to hide the information of which kinds of
weapons contain uranium today.
Cancer rates in Iraq have
increased dramatically over the rates noted before the
Gulf War of 1991. A planned study supposed to be done by
the UN was turned down in December 2001 under the
pressure of the U.S. government. Also scientific
magazines infrequently publish the results of smaller
independent studies (1). This whole situation brought
quite some irritation inside the scientific circle and
inside the peace activist movement. For example the
results of two recent studies which have already
calculated the cumulative dose effects to both Iraqi
civilians and Allied and Iraqi troops during the Gulf War
if 1991 are not well known among the larger international
medical, health and scientific communities; while at the
same time, reports by government bodies who use DU
ammunitions are well publicised, distributed and give the
impression that no or little effect exists.
We believe a World Uranium
Weapons Conference is needed to bring together the
scientific experts with their independent studies and the
peace, veterans, and anti-nuclear movements to get
updated and have the results of their studies and their
work combined. The Conference will also include extra
time for the conference members to combine existing
information, and to discuss the need for creating,
conducting and funding their own additional independent,
peer-reviewed, international study on the health hazards
caused by the use of uranium weapons worldwide.
Specifically, attention must be given to Iraq before the
data is lost or corrupted by the occupation. Because many
governments have the stated agenda of perpetuating
uranium weapons, their conclusions about uranium weapons
effects are not reliable or acceptable. Therefore, the
independent international non-governmental movements will
have to be responsible for the huge costs of this kind of
study, which cannot be done by a single country or
organisation.
Ideally such a study
should be conducted or co-ordinated by WHOWHO´s
operations are potentially compromised by its
constitutional obligations to the IAEA with its strong
obligations tothe nuclear lobby. The WHO is not allowed
to publish results without the consensus of the IAEA. The
results of any study done by WHO on DU or other uranium
weapons issues therefore should be highly suspect in its
credibility. It therefore becomes the additional
responsibility of our movements to constantly review and
publicly critique all governmental claims on these
issues.
Full-scale independent
peer review of existing data, continued independent
study, and a unified plan of action will lead to the
evidence needed to get uranium weapons officially banned
by the international community.
Thank you for your
consideration of this project. We welcome your future
interest and involvement.
For peace,
Marion Kuepker
Co-Coordinator, GAAAhttp://www.uraniumweaponsconference.de/summary.htm
...................................................................................................................................
Schroeder urges
politics to solve Mideast conflicts
Jordan Times, Tuesday, October 7,
2003
RIYADH (AFP) — The
Israel-Palestinian crisis and the rebuilding of Iraq
require political not military solutions, Chancellor
Gerhard Schroeder said Monday and accused Saudi charities
of financing “religious extremism” inside
Germany. “We share your concern about the situation
in the Middle East ... however the conflit cannot be
settled militarily, but only through political
means,” Schroeder told Saudi businessmen at the
chamber of commerce and industry in the kingdom's
capital.
He praised Riyadh's initiative
which offered Israel full ties with the world in exchange
for a full withdrawal from territory occupied since 1967,
adding that the US-backed "roadmap" today
offered an appropriate framework to work out the
Israel-Palestinian conflict.
“We have great hope in the
roadmap... and both sides to the conflict must
immediately respect its clauses in full,” Schroeder
said in a speech.
In Iraq, “we need a realistic
calendar for a progressive transfer of political
responsibilities to competent Iraqi parties,” the
chancellor said.
“We strongly back a
strengthening of the role of the United Nations in such
an interim process. Only the UN can guarantee the
necessary legitimacy for rapid reconstruction in Iraq
under an independent government that represents all
Iraqis.”
He later told a press conference
that a new US-backed UN resolution on Iraq, which has
failed to garner international support, had to be
“improved.”
“We believe the wording of
this resolution needs to be improved, which is possible.
And we have told this to our partners and our friends in
the United States and in France.
At the press conference in the
presence of Saudi leaders Schroeder attacked financial
support from the kingdom for what he called religious
propaganda spread in Germany.
“There are Saudi parties that
provide financial support to groups that engage in
religious propaganda in Berlin,” he charged.
Schroeder, who met with both King
Fahd and Crown Prince Abdullah on Sunday, did not provide
further details, but he said the German and Saudi
interior ministers will be meeting soon to find "a
way of cooperating in the fight against terrorism.”
In early August the influential
news magazine Der Spiegel revealed that German secret
services have been conducting surveillance of Saudi
diplomatic missions and other Saudi interests in the
country amid suspicions that the rich Arab Gulf kingdom
was supporting extremist networks such as Al Qaeda.
The magazine said Berlin now ranks
Saudi Arabia along with Syria among the countries
considered to present a threat, citing a security source
as saying the Saudi religious affairs minister in
particular had offered "advice and active
support" to militants.
In his speech, Schroeder also
called for international cooperation against terrorism
and for the causes of terrorism to be addressed.
"We cannot achieve security
solely by military means. He who wants to restore
security must fight violence on the one hand and cure the
causes of the violence on the other," he said.
Schroeder invited Saudi
entrepreneurs to invest in Germay and stressed Berlin's
interest in a partnership with the oil-rich kingdom.
The German leader, who opposed the
war in Iraq and has refused to send in troops to support
the troubled American occupation, flew on to the United
Arab Emirates where he will visit a defence exhibition in
Abu Dhabi and give a press conference in Dubai on
Tuesday.
Schroeder's regional tour which
began in Cairo on Saturday night was focusing on trade,
Iraq and the Arab-Israeli conflict.
David Kay,
head of the Iraq survey Group whose reputation is now
said to rest on his possible success in finding weapons
of mass destruction, has, in fact, another
reputation.Until October last year David Kay was the
vice-president of a major San Diego defense contractor
SCIENCE APPLICATIONS INTERNATIONAL CORPORATION (SAIC).
The US Government had given it a contract three years ago
to produce mobile biological vans for training purposes.
The Corporate Vice-President
until February last is now a senior policy official at
the Pentagon. The company is now part of the Iraq
occupation contractors involved in army services and the
radio station "Voice of the New Iraq."
In addition today (8th October) the Guardian reports
this interesting revelation - that the Pentagon
authorities have been selling surplus laboratory
equipment "that could be used to make biological or
chemical weapons" . Centrifuges, evaporators,
bacteriological incubators and protective
clothing....Congress's General Accounting Office had set
up a "sting operation" to find out what they
were selling. Bargain prices offered and no check on
buyer's background records.
UNEMPLOYMENT
IN THE MIDDLE EAST A SEVERE PROBLEM,
BY FRANZ SCHURMANN, PACIFIC NEWS SERVICE
In all economies young people most fear being "last
hired, first fired." In the Middle East, including
"advanced" economies like Saudi Arabia more and
more young people don't even have a chance
to be newly hired. So, more and more of them drift to the
political and religious fringes where they find
direction.
In a recent press conference in Qatar the World Bank's
long-time president James Wolfensohn painted a picture of
the Middle East as noir as one can imagine. Last year in
the Middle East and
Muslim North Africa the highest rate of unemployment
among young adults was in Syria at 73 percent. The lowest
was in Morocco at 37 percent. In the year 2000, about 104
million jobs were
available in the region but 146 million were needed. By
2020 the current gap between overall employment and
unemployment will have become a chasm. The only way that
picture can be prevented, Wolfensohn said, is by creating
100 million jobs in the region by 2020.
Wolfensohn added that even if the jobs were created the
region has to make far-reaching transformations in the
political and economic spheres that would amount to
"a new social contract."
But realistically the only transformations on the
region's horizon are an Islamic Umma (communalism) and
not a Western-style democracy as the United States hopes
will happen
in Iraq.
Why is it that Middle Eastern peoples are the only major
population bloc in the world that has not embraced modern
Western values? Any explanation must involve oil.
The internal combustion engine was invented in 1887 but
already by 1900 the great powers of Europe, especially
Britain and Germany, were vying to dominate the Middle
East in a bid to
control oil. The two World Wars ousted Germany from the
Middle East but grown child America, dwarfing its parent
Britain, made it clear that it alone would dominate the
Middle East.
In the 1920s the British Empire and America decided that
theMiddle East was forever destined to be the number one
source of oil for the entire world, nothing less but also
nothing more.
Some money trickled down to the locals but what kept the
region "backward" was the result of deliberate
Anglo-American policy. Middle Easterners were to be seen
but not heard.
The Middle East was not allowed to experience the
enlightenment and subsequent industrial revolutions of
Europe, America, and East Asia. If Middle Eastern young
adults wanted education they were told to go to Europe or
America. But when they came back home they found despotic
regimes massively backed by British and then American
money and firepower.
Many students, intellectuals and clerics, called for
revolution but many if not most of them ended up on the
gallows. At the top, the Anglo-American rulers behind the
curtains discouraged the corrupt regimes from setting up
industry by stuffing more dollars in their pockets. At
the bottom radical and reformer students who did not go
to the gallows ended up abroad with fellowships in
American and British universities.
The turning point came in November 1978 when the Shah of
Iran was overthrown. Ayatollah Khomeini taught the young
adults throughout the Islamic world that the true
revolutionary was not
Karl Marx or Gamal Nasser but the Prophet Muhammad.
Saddam Hussein was one of the first who recognized the
danger from the new Islamic Republic and invaded Iran in
September 1980.
From Mona Sarawat
CLOSURE
OF HOTEL REFLECTING PATHAN CULTURE
By Zakir Hassnain
PESHAWAR: A lack of foreign and local tourists to the
Frontier province has forced the closure of the Khan
Klub, a hotel reflecting the centuries-old Pathan culture
and civilisation. The hotel, housed in a 200-year-old
building, stopped business on Wednesday. The hotel's
manager, Bashir Ahmed Awan, said he opened the hotel in
1995 with an Irish American partner, Martin Davies
Ashley, and another Pakistani friend. "I borrowed
the idea from a Turkish restaurant that served
traditional Turkish food and where customers sat on the
floor to enjoy the cuisine with live folk music in the
background," Mr Awan told Daily Times.
After returning from Turkey, Mr Awan rented the
200-year-old building, which was in a dilapidated
condition, for 8 years and renovated it to present the
Pathan culture. The hotel was opened by American, German,
French, British, Italian, Swiss, Spanish, Danish,
Austrian and Saudi ambassadors and senior diplomats who
also brought their families here, Mr Awan said. "The
word
'Klub' is German for a hotel reflecting old
culture," he added. There are 8 rooms in the hotel,
each named after a gemstone - lapis, spinel, morganite,
tourmaline, topaz, peridot, ruby and garnet. Bathrooms
are old-fashioned and the restaurant is designed on the
pattern of a traditional Pathan hujra.
Customers had a choice between Pakistani, Afghan, Chinese
and western food, to be had on the floor decorated with
hand-woven carpets and cushions. Two folk musicians with
rabab or Chitrali sitar and pitcher were always in
attendance.
"Business is totally down because there are no
foreigners, especially after 9/11," Mr Awan said,
adding that he had decided to close down the hotel
because future prospects did not seem bright.
"Foreign tourists do not come because of security
concern," he said. He added that such a hotel, which
was very expensive and located in a congested dirty area,
would not attract Pakistanis.
IRAQ,
ARCHAEOLOGICAL HERITAGE
Sept 29 (AFP) - Armed bandits have been ransacking
archeological sites in Iraq and selling off untold
quantities of artefacts. The thieves have
been rifling dozens of partially excavated ancient
cities in southern Iraq for months and the booty
has been showing up on the open market,
There are no record of the objects coming
from these sites, It is known that they come
from Mesopotamia but not from which sites
There are thousands of sites of historical interest in
the part of Iraq bounded by the modern-day cities
of An Nasiryah, Kut and Diwaniyah, but many of them have
not been excavated. Some of the most
important ones are protected by small numbers of
Iraqi guards, but in most cases guards are no match
for the dozens of scavengers Iraqi curators
have asked US civil administrators to beef up security
at sites such as Nippur, Shmet, Bzekh, and Isin, by
organising regular foot and aerial patrols, but
the US command structure is very
decentralised. The international market in
Mesopotamian antiquities is "booming," and
the cylinder seals, small statues and clay tablets
that are being unearthed are highly sought-after by
collectors and easy to smuggle out of the country, said
McGuire Gibson, the University of Chicago's Iraq
specialist. "This has been going on for
six months," said Gibson. "Some of
these sites will be so badly destroyed that archeologists
will not go back to them."
ld/mk
POINTS ON THE EU DRAFT CONSTITUTION FROM THE NATIONAL
PLATFORM, ON THE
EVE OF THE INTERGOVERNMENTAL CONFERENCE (IGC) TO FINALISE
IT
THE FORMAL END TO NATIONAL POLITICAL INDEPENDENCE
Article 1.10.1 says: "The Constitution, and law
adopted by the Union's
Institutions in exercising competences conferred on it,
shall have primacy
over the law of the Member States." Clearly
States accepting this article
can no longer regard themselves as independent sovereign
States, comparable
to the other 170 or so states in the world. The primacy
of EU law over
national law has never been stated in an EU Treaty
before. This doctrine
has been developed by the EU Court of Justice,but not
accepted, for
example, by the German Constitutional Court.
CZECH REPUBLIC PRESIDENT ON AN EU SUPERSTATE
"This is crossing the Rubicon, after which there
will be no more sovereign
states in Europe with fully-fledged governments and
parliaments which
represent legitimate interests of their citizens, but
only one state will
remain. Basic thingswill be decided by a
remote 'federal government' in
Brussels and, for example, Czech citizens will be
only a tiny particle
whose voice - and influence - will be almost zero . We
are against a
European superstate."
- Czech President Vaclav Klaus, article on the EU
Constitution in Mlada
Fronta, 29 September 2003; Irish Times, 30 September 2003
UNION COMPETENCES AND NATIONAL COMPETENCES ... THE ECJ
WILL DECIDE:
Article 1.12 sets out the areas of EXCLUSIVE EU
legislative competence:
monetary policy for the eurozone, the common commercial
policy, the customs
union and common fisheries policy. Article 1.13 sets out
the areas of
"SHARED COMPETENCE" between the EU and Member
States: the internal market;
the area of freedom, security and justice; agriculture
and fisheries;
transport; energy; social policy; social cohesion;
environment; consumer
protection; common safety concerns in public health.
Article 1.11.2 states:
"The Member States shall exercise their competence
to the extent that the
Union has not exercised, or has decided to cease
exercising, its
competence." It is thus the Union, not
national States, that has priority
even in these shared areas. It is not even stated that
Union competences
must be "expressly" conferred, which would
limit them somewhat. In
jurisdictional disputes it is the Union, through the
Court of Justice, that
will decide the boundaries of the "shared"
policy areas, that is, whether
it is the EU or the Member States will make the laws. A
gesture to placate
concerned "sovereignists" is Article 1.9.2:
"Competences not conferred upon
the Union in the Constitution remain with the Member
States."
LOYAL" SUPPORT FOR COMMON EU FOREIGN AND SECURITY
POLICY
Article 1.15 states: "Member States shall actively
and unreservedly support
the Union's common foreign and security policy in a
spirit of loyalty and
mutual solidarity and shall comply with the acts adopted
by the Union in
this area." There is to be an EU
Minister for Foreign Affairs, distinct
from national Foreign Affairs Ministers, as well as
a permanent EU
political President instead of the six-montly EU
Presidencies we have now.
This is further evidence of the EU moving towards
statehood and becoming an
international actor in its own right. A constitutional
duty of "loyalty" to
and "solidarity" with the foreign policy of
such an EU entity, makes a
mockery of pretensions to an independent national foreign
policy. The
draft Constitution extends the principle of
"enhanced cooperation,"
introduced in the Treaty of Nice, to security and
military matters.
Excerpts in a mail from Professor Anthony Coughlan, jcoughln@tcd.ie .
************
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