Posted on 05/10/2003 7:38:59 AM PDT by demlosers
The German government swiftly rejected a proposal from Warsaw to contribute troops to a Polish occupation zone in Iraq, saying it would not consider any economic or military role in the defeated country without a clear United Nations mandate for reconstruction.
This seemed to dash hopes in Washington that Germany would break with France on their mutual insistence upon a major role for the UN in Iraq.
Defense Minister Peter Struck told the Bundestag parliament that Germany would not send troops to Iraq as part of a larger unit comprising Danish and Polish troops, government spokesman Bela Anda said on Wednesday. On Monday, the Polish defense minister, Jerzy Szmajdzinski, had told a Washington newspaper he hoped German and Danish troops currently stationed in Stettin, Poland, would help control the occupation zone the United States has assigned to Poland.
Struck, who was informed of Szmajdzinski's plan after a 20-minute meeting with U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in Washington on Monday, said, “This proposal comes as an absolute surprise for the German government.“ He said he had learned of the suggestion from the media “without us having exchanged even a word about it beforehand.“
Although Berlin did not directly criticize the Polish government, it was angered by what it sees as the latest in a series of affronts by the Poles against Germany and the European Union, which Poland will join next year.
The first came in December shortly after the EU agreed to accept Poland and several other candidates into the EU in 2004 and to give Poland additional aid of EUR1 billion. Two days later, Poland announced that it had placed a EUR3.6 billion order for U.S. F16 fighter jets rather than French Mirages or Swedish Gripens, undermining plans to coordinate EU military procurement.
The next affront, this time aimed directly at Germany and France, came this year, when the Polish government and a group of other eastern European accession countries signed a declaration supporting a U.S.-led military strike against Iraq without a UN mandate. Observers say the decision to reward Poland with one of the three military zones in Iraq is part of a U.S. strategy to keep the EU from forming a joint military and foreign policy that it sees as a potential threat to U.S. preeminence. U.S. National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice denies this. “The United States did not divide the Europeans,“ she said in interviews published Wednesday in Spanish newspapers. “It wasn't us who threatened smaller countries with reprisals nor tried to shut up the countries of eastern Europe.“
In contrast to France and Germany, which last week spearheaded the formation of a European general staff, Britain's prime minister, Tony Blair, this week spoke out in favor of a U.S.-dominated unipolar world.
German participation would also have helped deflect the costs of U.S.-led occupation. Germany was one of the biggest financiers of the second Gulf war in 1991. Poland only agreed to send 7,000 troops to Iraq on the condition that the United States foot the bill.
In recent weeks, the United States has sought to paste over differences with Germany, while openly chastising France for its anti-war stance.
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell went as far as to threaten France with “consequences“ for vowing to block a UN resolution condoning war in the UN Security Council. But it has ignored harsh statements by German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer criticizing President Bush's new doctrine of preemptive war and the influence of neoconservatives on the Pentagon, instead choosing to read the German government's antiwar stance as part of deep-rooted pacifism.
Struck left his meeting with Rumsfeld saying that relations “with the United States are on their way back to normality.“ But diplomats called it a bad sign that both Rumsfeld and Rice refused to hold a follow-up photo session with Struck. Schröder will meet Powell in Berlin on June 16.
Meanwhile, EU diplomatic circles are puzzled by Poland's decision to back the new U.S. military strategy against the will of Germany and France. The former communist country is in line for billions in subsidies after it joins the EU next year. But the size of this aid, which is doled out to poor regions across the EU, depends largely on Germany, which is the principal net contributor to the EU regional subsidy pot.
Traditionally, Berlin has supported Poland's entry and the country's bid to receive EU aid. But that could change if Poland does not find its place within the EU by 2006 when the Union's regional subsidies are renegotiated to accommodate the new members.
Schröder had remained tight-lipped earlier this year when French President Jacques Chirac warned eastern European accession countries to rethink their position or risk losing much-needed EU aid.
Not likely Germany will ever, ever, ever do anything to "help" Poland out doing anything unless it's drawing a border down the middle in some sort of deal with the Russians.
Boooooooooooo, weakness. At least make the Watermelon meet Powell in Washington.
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