why Kouchner Must Not Be Brought into the Foreign Minister's Powerful Position in EU

Kouchner Urges Stronger Afghan Role for Europe

By Steven Erlanger
Published: November 4, 2009

PARIS — Europe should take the opportunity of a new Afghan administration to coordinate its policies on Afghanistan and not wait for Washington to make all the decisions, the French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, said on Wednesday.

“We need to speak as Europe to the Americans” on Afghanistan, he said, and end the differences in policy and military rules on the ground, where the Germans fight only if fired upon and each member of NATO has different rules of engagement. “In Europe we are acting and fighting and going to war, but we are not talking to one another, and it’s shameful,” he said.

“We have to be together and improve the command structure,” he said. Asked if the NATO alliance was not working very well in Afghanistan, he said: “It’s not working at all.”

“What is the goal? What is the road? And in the name of what?” Mr. Kouchner asked. He said he appreciated President Obama’s deliberations on a new Afghan strategy, but asked: “Where are the Americans? It begins to be a problem.” He added: “We need to talk to one another as allies.”

Mr. Kouchner spoke, in French and English, with a small group of foreign journalists from NATO countries at the Quai d’Orsay, the French foreign ministry.

He said that the NATO alliance had to get behind President Hamid Karzai despite his well documented problems with corruption and questionable political allies. “Karzai is corrupt, O.K.,” Mr. Kouchner said, but corruption is endemic in Afghanistan and “he is our guy,” despite being weakened by the recent election marked by fraud. “We have to legitimize him” if NATO has any chance to consolidate Afghanistan and then leave it, Mr. Kouchner said.

Western political experts who know nothing about Afghanistan detected fraud by sampling ballots, Mr. Kouchner said. “This is science. But politics is not science. It’s the common touch.”

He said France had given Mr. Karzai a nine-point agenda for governmental reform and was urging the defeated candidate, Abdullah Abdullah, to at least work with Mr. Karzai.

As for the war, he said it was impossible to occupy Afghanistan or defeat the Taliban in the mountains, and that NATO should not look for a military victory but instead consolidate and secure selected populated areas. “It’s a Pashtun war,” he said, “and to be effective, you must do it close to the Afghan people and not against them.”

On Iran, Mr. Kouchner said that the violence of demonstrations on Wednesday was very important, another sign that the Iranians “are losing time, not gaining time” by their refusal to deal seriously with the Security Council and the West on the issue of nuclear enrichment.

He said that there would be no discussion of new Security Council sanctions against Iran until the end of the year at the request of Washington. “Our American friends ask us to wait until the end of the year,” he said. “It’s not us.” The Obama administration wants to see if Iran will respond to an offer of negotiations, Mr. Kouchner said. “We’re waiting for talks, but where are the talks?”

Even the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, “is frustrated by their obstinacy,” Mr. Kouchner said of the Iranian leadership. “They are cornered by themselves and confused in themselves” about what to do, he said, adding: “No one knows who decides or who talks to whom in Iran.”

The confusion in Tehran was on full display at the the Geneva and Vienna meetings, where Iran at first agreed in principle and later rejected a proposal to hand over most of its lightly enriched uranium to Russia for processing into nuclear fuel for a medical reactor, Mr. Kouchner said. “It was a trap for us, and it’s one trap after another with them.”

In the meantime, he said, under current sanctions, Germany should stop its companies from signing contracts with Iran, as France and Britain have done.

Nov 25, 2009 6:52

UK diplomat questions post of Jews on Iraq war enquiry panel

JONNY PAUL, JERUSALEM POST Correspondent

A British diplomat has criticized the appointment of two leading Jewish academics to the UK's Iraq Inquiry panel, stating it may upset the balance of the inquiry.

Sir Oliver Miles, a former British ambassador to Libya, told The Independent newspaper this week that the appointment of Sir Martin Gilbert, the renowned Holocaust historian and Winston Churchill biographer, and Sir Lawrence Freedman, professor of war studies and vice-principal of King's College London, would be seen as "ammunition" that could be used to call the inquiry a "whitewash."

Miles said the two academics were Jewish and that Gilbert was an active Zionist. He also said they were both strong supporters of former prime minister Tony Blair and the Iraq war.

"Such facts are not usually mentioned in the mainstream British and American media, but the Jewish Chronicle and the Israeli media have no such inhibitions, and the Arabic media both in London and in the region are usually not far behind," he told the newspaper.

"It is a pity that, if and when the inquiry is accused of a whitewash, such handy ammunition will be available," he added. "Membership should not only be balanced; it should be seen to be balanced."

The former ambassador also said that having two historians in a panel of five "seems a lot" and also questioned the Jewish academics' credentials.

"In December 2004 Sir Martin, while pointing out that the 'war on terror' was not a third world war, wrote that Bush and Blair 'may well, with the passage of time and the opening of the archives, join the ranks of Roosevelt and Churchill' - an eccentric opinion that would seem to rule him out as a member of the committee. Sir Lawrence is the reputed architect of the 'Blair doctrine' of humanitarian intervention, which was invoked in Kosovo and Afghanistan as well as Iraq," Miles said.

A spokesman for the inquiry told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday that it was "not an issue" and therefore declined to comment.

The investigation, which began on Tuesday, was launched by the UK government and is expected to last months, with its findings likely to be published in the summer of 2010. The inquiry will look at the whole period from 2001 to 2009 to identify what lessons can be learned from the Iraq conflict.