Thursday, January 30, 2003

If you can't beat them, lie. Apparently PR flack in Berlin and Paris tried to spin the letter signed by eight European Prime Ministers as just a variation of the argument they were making in the first place. Tony Blair's office slapped that down pretty quickly by pointing out that they hadn't even offered Chirac and Schroeder the opportunity to sign the letter.

Tony Blair’s spokesman denied that the letter was designed to split the European Union, but said that there was no use in pretending that the Union spoke with one voice. “It is clear that the European Union is no longer six countries, it is 15 and will shortly be 25 . . . No one country represents European foreign policy exclusively,” he said.

And in Paris and Berlin and Greece (apparently) they are seething.

Philippe Moreau-Defarges, of the French Institute for International Relations, said the article had inflicted “a low blow on France and Germany which have been trying to play the strong-arm role and have not been taken seriously”.

France didn't low blow Powell last week? Germany hasn't repeatedly low blowed the US during Schroeder's campaign?

Greece, which holds the European Union’s rotating presidency, criticised what it said was a right-wing move against the Union’s efforts to foster a common position on Iraq. This “does not contribute to the common approach to the problem,” Costas Simitis, the Greek Prime Minister, said.

Bet that was the first time Tony Blair has ever been called a right-winger. And by common position of course Costas means his position.

At the UN yesterday, Gunther Pleuger, the German UN envoy, refused to comment on the letter, while one French diplomat called it a media ambush.

Oh the indignation and cries of ambush when it is Fance or Germany who doesn't get their way. It is too funny. They have tried to bi-laterally block everything the US has done in the past year and when a group of eight other nations, frustrated with not getting proper respect, are forced to publish a public letter, they throw a hissy fit.

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