Posted on 05/08/2002 10:59:07 PM PDT by Timesink
JACK STRAW sharply rebuked Romano Prodi, the European Commission president, yesterday for suggesting that Britain's close relationship with America made it a bad European.
Warning European leaders never to forget how much they benefited from America's power and strength, the Foreign Secretary said: "I do not share the view of Romano Prodi that Britain's relationship with America somehow gets in the way of playing a full part in Europe.
"I reject the idea that relations with the United States and EU involve a zero sum - that an individual has to prove his 'pro-European' credentials by being anti-American."
Mr Straw's speech to the Brookings Institute, a Washington think tank, came at a time of increasingly tetchy relations across the Atlantic, with European leaders criticising US "isolationism".
Many Americans say Europe, with the exception of Britain, has been an unreliable ally since September 11 and is too steeped in historic anti-Semitism to be trusted over the Middle East.
Mr Prodi angered the Government last month when he claimed that Britain was not brave enough to embrace the euro and dismissed as wishful thinking the idea that Britain's relationship with America gave it special leverage in the world. "I wonder what makes this great nation so confident when dealing with a vastly more powerful nation over 3,000 miles away but afraid to play a full part in shaping the future of the continent to which it belongs."
Though Mr Straw did not refer yesterday to the Anglo-American "special relationship", many Americans have not hesitated to hail Britain as their only true friend in Europe since September 11.
A British accent in Washington regularly provokes expressions of thanks from strangers, many of whom ascribe Britain's support to the shared experience of fighting fascism 60 years ago.
Taking up Tony Blair's vision of Britain as a bridge between Europe and America, Mr Straw went out of his way to hail the close ties of family, culture and trade that America enjoys with many other European nations.
Calling on both sides to focus on the fundamental values they share and to be more "relaxed" about inevitable policy differences, Mr Straw reminded his American audience that France, Germany and Britain have sent 6,000 troops to Afghanistan, almost as many as the 7,000 Americans sent there.
He also reminded America that, though its defence spending outstripped that of Europe, aid spending by Europe was ahead of America. He hailed Anglo-American co-operation in the Middle East, as with the deal to end the siege of Ramallah.
At the same time, he defended America from the torrent of European criticism of its "isolationism", as evidenced by America's withdrawal from the Kyoto global warming treaty, the International Criminal Court and other multilateral treaties.
Calling on Europe to recognise that America "is likely to have serious, rather than quixotic reasons" for its decisions, Mr Straw warned Europeans not to assume that America can be compared to an individual European nation.
"You all here know, but we sometimes forget, that the United States is half a continent," its population equal to the five largest EU states put together, and its economy "larger still", Mr Straw said.
These Euro wackos think it normal to gossip fascist views like this dangerously. This would be an insulting declaration of war in another time and maybe in our times.
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