The Iraqi crisis continued
to deepen divisions within Europe, generating growing antipathy toward
Britain's unconditional support of the United States. In an editorial
Wednesday, France's most influential newspaper, Le Monde of Paris, described
Germany's support of the United States as "simply traditional" but said British
Prime Minister Tony Blair's "stentorian position" was more irksome to Europe.
From the start, said Le Monde , Blair has taken a stance in favor of
military action against Iraq without consulting his European partners, while at
the same time proposing himself as a candidate for the future leadership of
Europe.
In
La Stampa of Turin,
Boris Biancheri, an Italian ex-ambassador to both the United States and
Britain, accused the United States of "giving world public opinion the
impression that the showdown with Iraq reflected not so much respect for U.N.
resolutions as a wish to end a match with Saddam Hussein that had been left
unfinished by Operation Desert Storm."
The British, he said, were behaving "as if the rules of
European foreign and security policy did not exist," and seem to love wars.
"The Falklands War boosted the popularity of Mrs. Thatcher, and the Gulf War
turned out to be fruitful for both Britain's military and economic prestige,"
Biancheri added. "The British seem to be saying to themselves, 'We have an
experienced and excellent professional army, so let's keep it busy.' "
The
conservative Paris newspaper Le Figaro, under the headline "Britain Goes to War," reported
British opinion polls showing a majority of 56 percent in favor of bombing
Iraq. This, it suggested, was because the British were "inundated daily with
'revelations' about Saddam's arsenal"--a comment not without substance. In
Spain, El País said the
United States should be denied use of Spanish military bases. In an editorial Wednesday, it condemned "an operation that will end up
by hurting the Iraqi people much more than it will hurt Saddam Hussein."
Nevertheless, the next day's paper led
with an offer of support from the Spanish leader, José Maria Aznar, which
included giving the U.S. forces access to the bases.
Within Britain, press opinion was generally
divided between rejection of military action against Iraq and support for it on
condition that it resulted in the elimination of Saddam Hussein. The Independent, in a
front-page editorial, said that "profound errors of judgement are about to be
made." It said that "the purposes of the military adventure in Iraq remain
fatally unspecific," and added that one reason Saddam had not dared to use his
biological and chemical weapons during the Gulf War was the weight of Arab
power ranged against him.
"Without
the kind of coalition created during the Gulf War, gung-ho Anglo-American
militarism is especially offensive. Worse still, it will be ineffective," the
Independent concluded. The newspaper also published an interview with former U.N. Secretary-General Boutros
Boutros-Ghali, condemning the United States and saying he was "astonished" that
nobody considered the sufferings of the Iraqi people--"[a]nd the UN, remember,
was an institution created to protect the people."
The Guardian, another liberal British newspaper, said in an editorial that the U.S. refusal to accept Cuban and Iranian
inspectors in a team due to inspect U.S. chemical-weapons facilities was
justified by "precisely the same argument used by Baghdad about the
preponderance of US--and British--inspectors on the team now in dispute." The
impression of double standards being applied was particularly strong where it
did most damage--in the Middle East, the Guardian concluded. The
Egyptian Foreign Minister, Amr Moussa, told Le Monde in an interview
that "nothing can justify the military option."
The
Times of London,
which led its front page with a story about an astonishing secret alliance
between Iraq and Iran to oppose the United States, said in an editorial that
Blair was neither "an American poodle nor the EU's lapdog," and that he
couldn't be the toast of both Bill Clinton and continental Europe. A European
foreign and security policy, it said, would be insular and isolationist and
would invariably prefer appeasement to intervention. "The President should note
that the special relationship cannot be reconciled with the creation of a
European state that includes this country," it said. In the conservative
tabloid the Express , former Conservative Prime Minister John Major wrote
an article supporting Blair.
The conservative Daily Telegraph published
an article by former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle
proposing that the West recognize and arm a provisional Iraqi government to
overthrow the Ba'ath regime, and ran an editorial supporting him under the
headline "Target Saddam." Thursday, the Telegraph carried a front-page
report by its resident conservative conspiracy theorist, Ambrose
Evans-Pritchard, that former White House Director of Special Projects and
Special Needs Robyn Dickey had been "transferred abruptly to a job at the
Defence Department after she was named as a long-standing lover of President
Clinton in Paula Jones's sexual harassment lawsuit."
In an editorial, the
Telegraph blasted Tina Brown, the British editor of The
New
Yorker , for her sycophantic treatment of Clinton and Blair.
Under the headline "Tina-bopping," the newspaper quoted from an article she had
written for her own magazine about the White House dinner for the British prime
minister, accusing her of "sheer gush" and "babbling soppiness" toward both him
and his host, the president. "Come back and help our 'clever, young and
unsullied' prime minister in his desperate struggle to keep Labour trendy after
nine months in power," it said. "Come back and bathe him in the balm of your
adjectives."
In the French and Italian
press, many column inches were devoted to Robert De Niro's interrogation as a
witness by a Paris magistrate in connection with an international call-girl
scandal, and in the British press much space was given to Mohammed Al Fayed's
interview with the tabloid Daily Mirror saying he believed that the deaths of his son
Dodi and his friend Princess Diana had been the result of a "conspiracy."
