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Athens summit: Three-step waltz on Iraq

Meeting at the summit in Athens, the time had come for European leaders, communing around the accession of 10 new countries, to reconcile.

(B2) Europe goes like this, like a three-beat waltz. At first, are the storm, the quarrel and the cries, Then, as in old couples who know that they must continue to live together, they have to pick up the broken dishes, swallow their tears, their anger and patch things up, in a low voice. In Athens, although the Iraqi question was not officially on the agenda of this European summit, it gave rise to many meetings. Tony Blair and Jacques Chirac then met for a good 25 minutes. A happy coincidence, according to the spokesperson for the British leader: "The Prime Minister has gone for a breath of fresh air. Chirac had the same idea. It was totally spontaneous and unplanned"."Not at all a coincidence" hastened to deny the French president "... but an appointment scheduled in advance"!

This divergence aside, the two leaders discussed the restoration of essential public services in Iraq, the situation in hospitals, and their "common concern about the looting of museums in Baghdad" says Chirac. Which did not prevent the latter in his press conference from addressing a small spade to the Anglo-Americans by designating them as "occupying authorities" and hoping that they will agree on the European Commission's idea of ​​an airlift to repatriate injured children.

Be that as it may, the leaders of the 25 - the Fifteen Member States and the ten new States who came to Athens to sign their accession treaty - were to adopt a joint declaration reaffirming in particular the full "support for the United Nations and its efforts to guarantee international legitimacy…". As for the will for Europe "to assume [its] global responsibilities" which also appears in this declaration, it is probably still a little early. For the third part of the waltz, the common foreign and defense policy, we will therefore probably have to wait...

(Nicolas Gros-Verheyde - article published in France-Soir, April 2003)

Nicolas Gros Verheyde

Chief editor of the B2 site. Graduated in European law from the University of Paris I Pantheon Sorbonne and listener to the 65th session of the IHEDN (Institut des Hautes Etudes de la Défense Nationale. Journalist since 1989, founded B2 - Bruxelles2 in 2008. EU/NATO correspondent in Brussels for Sud-Ouest (previously West-France and France-Soir).

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