BY DOUG LORIMER
In the wake of the February 14-16 international weekend of anti-war demonstrations — in which up to 12 million people participated — leaders of the 15 European Union countries held an emergency summit on February 17 to cobble together a common position on a US-British invasion of Iraq, now expected to begin in early March.
The February 18 Washington Post reported that British Prime Minister Tony Blair went into the summit seeking an EU declaration that he could present as endorsing an immediate war on Iraq.
Blair managed to obtain a declaration that echoes the fraudulent premise of the US war drive — that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction — and demands that Iraq "disarm and cooperate [with UN weapons inspectors] immediately and fully". It contained a warning to Baghdad that "inspections cannot continue indefinitely".
However, the declaration fell short of including the elements that Blair had sought. As the Washington Post report observed: "Despite the warning, the European declaration was marked most by what it did not say: It set no deadline for the inspections to be called off; it did not commit European governments to using force to back up UN resolutions on disarming Iraq; and it did not say [Iraqi President Saddam] Hussein is already in 'material breach' of the resolutions...
"Instead, the statement said Europe wants to disarm Iraq peacefully. And in a bow to the millions of anti-war protesters who took to the streets over the weekend, it said the union is pushing for a peaceful solution to the Iraqi crisis because 'it is clear that this is what the people of Europe want'."
The vast majority of people in the EU countries certainly want a "peaceful solution to the Iraqi crisis". More accurately, they are opposed to a war against Iraq.
During the summit, EU leaders sought to identify their position of supporting war "as a last resort" as being in tune with the sentiments of those who participated in the huge anti-war demonstrations throughout Europe.
"There were not only young, politicised people", said Romano Prodi, president of the European Commission, the EU's executive body. "This was the whole society that took part in a spontaneous way." At another point, he said: "We cannot forget the millions in the streets this weekend."
Overwhelming opposition
The massive protests confirmed what recent opinion polls have indicated — overwhelming opposition by ordinary people to a war against Iraq. Polls taken over the weekend preceding the EU summit showed that anti-war sentiment had firmed in France and Germany — rising from 75% to almost 90%. A poll conducted by the German news magazine Der Spiegel found that 53% of Germans believe the US is the greatest threat to peace in the world.
In Spain and Italy, where the right-wing governments of prime ministers Jose Maria Aznar and Silvio Berlusconi have given political backing to a unilateral US invasion of Iraq, overwhelming majorities — as high as 96% — oppose unilateral military action by Washington and its "coalition of the willing", according to recent polls by Gallup International.
Even with the endorsement of the UN Security Council, war against Iraq was opposed by decisive majorities in all but two of 10 EU member countries — Ireland and the Netherlands.
While acknowledging this public opposition to war, the EU declaration came closest to the position taken by the French government, which is calling for more time to be given to the UN weapons inspection process, but does not exclude being part of "the coalition of the willing" provided the US-led invasion is mandated by the Security Council.
In line with Paris, the EU declaration affirmed that the UN should "remain at the centre of the international order" and that "the primary responsibility for dealing with Iraqi disarmament lies with the Security Council".
The February 18 Wall Street Journal provided an insight into the thinking behind this position, quoting a "senior member of [French President Jacques] Chirac's ruling right-of-centre coalition" who said: "All we need is a few extra weeks from the Americans, so we can say the [UN weapons inspectors] got a chance to do their job."
Amir Taheri, a regular contributor to the right-wing US National Review On-Line, reported last November that a senior French official had told him that Chirac believed that Iraq's ruling Baath Party had "potentially the most effective leadership group in the whole Arab world" and that Paris would seek to block any US attempt to carry out "regime change" in Baghdad.
Chirac and Baghdad
When Chirac was France's prime minister in 1975, he became the first French leader to make an official visit to Baghdad. In 1978, Hussein paid an official visit to France, his first and last to a Western country.
During the 1980s, France sold Iraq an estimated US$20 billion worth of weapons and emerged as Iraq's largest trading partner after the Soviet Union. In exchange for France's support for Baghdad in its eight-year war against Iran, French oil companies were granted a 23% share of Iraq's oil production, contracts they were unable to act on because of the UN trade embargo imposed on Iraq in 1990.
In the face of the Bush administration's drive to forcibly remove Hussein's regime and install a regime subservient to US political and business interests, Chirac has sought to protect French imperialist interests in Iraq by seeking to force Washington to place its plans for "regime change" in Iraq under the direction of the UN Security Council, in which France has a veto.
The Bush administration originally planned to carry out "regime change" in Iraq in accordance with the doctrine proclaimed in George Bush's January 2002 State of the Union speech — of unilateral US "pre-emptive action" against any foreign government deemed by Washington to be acting contrary to "US interests".
Washington sought to justify an invasion with the claim that Baghdad possessed a huge arsenal of biological and chemical weapons, and was on the verge of developing nuclear weapons, which it might give to terrorists intent on attacking the US.
UN manoeuvres
According to Michael Klare, a frequent contributor on military affairs to the US Foreign Policy in Focus web site, it was only after the Pentagon had drawn up its invasion plan in late August that Bush decided to seek UN Security Council endorsement.
"Because his forces would not be ready to strike for another six months", Klare wrote, "Bush concluded that he had nothing to lose by giving the UN more time to act, even though he clearly believed that UN action was pointless. At the same time, going to New York and asking for UN action allowed him to quiet those domestic critics (including some senior Republicans) who felt that a veneer of international support was necessary to lend a degree of legitimacy to the planned US invasion."
When Bush went to the UN General Assembly on September 12, he demanded that the UN Security Council pass a resolution giving Washington the authority to use force against Iraq. However, Paris and Moscow used the threat of their veto power on the council to pressure Washington into accepting a resolution (1441) on November 8 that demanded Iraq agree to a resumption of UN weapons inspections or face unspecified "serious consequences".
Washington assumed that the conditions attached to the demand for resumption of weapons inspections would make it impossible for Iraq to comply with the resolution, thus giving the US a legal pretext to take military action once its invasion force was assembled.
Prior to the return of UN weapons inspectors, there was majority public support in the US for a unilateral attack on Iraq. However, by agreeing to work through the UN, the Bush administration undermined public support for such an attack.
According to the latest polls, a solid majority of Americans believe that Washington should not go to war against Iraq without Security Council approval. "Indeed", Jim Lobe observed in an February 18 article on the Hong Kong-based Asia Times Online web site, "Despite the ever-louder government drumbeat for war and the breathless security alerts issued by grim-faced officials on an almost daily basis, only 37 per cent of the US public favours invading Iraq without UN backing."
With Washington's invasion force only weeks away from being ready to move against Iraq, the Bush gang is becoming increasing desperate to secure a second resolution from the Security Council which it can present to US and international public opinion as a UN mandate for launching a war.
Having failed to convince the world that Baghdad has somehow been able to hide its alleged weapons of mass destruction from on-the-ground inspectors, Washington now appears to have opted for Plan B.
On February 20, Russian foreign minister Igor Ivanov said Moscow had received "alarming information" that inspectors were being subjected to "very strong pressure in order to provoke their departure from Iraq" or else to present negative assessments to the Security Council that "could be used as a pretext for the use of force".
From Green Left Weekly, February 26, 2003.
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