The Hindu : European Union's focus is on fighting terrorism

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Mar 23, 2004

International

International

European Union's focus is on fighting terrorism

By Batuk Gathani

BRUSSELS, MARCH 22. The 15 European Union member-States are engaged in a frantic round of "across the table" negotiations on security and terrorism. However, their "terror plans" at best look modest and bureaucracy appears to hinder efforts to improve security.

The Europeans may also be overlooking the fact that the heart of the problem could be the worsening relations between Arabs and Jews, highlighted by the killings of Palestinian civilians by Israeli troops and the Palestinians hitting back resulting in the death of Israeli civilians. The images of such incidents have become routine news items on western television screens and newspaper columns. All this has also triggered both an anti-Jewish and anti-Arab response from the E.U. citizens. Though the E.U. has a resident population of some 12 million Muslims, only a tiny fraction subscribes to the Al-Qaeda brand of structured terrorism.

Ireland is preparing the ground for an E.U. summit here on Thursday by holding consultations with Britain, France and Spain. The E.U. Foreign Ministers met here today to discuss terrorism, sidestepping their differences over the Bush and Blair-led war in Iraq and the internal political hiccups over the adoption of the constitution. But American officials have complained that the U.S. has been `sidelined' from the deliberations. The sentiment was summed up by Romano Prodi, President of the European Commission. Mr. Prodi told a newspaper that the Europeans were "united against terrorism" but the war in Iraq was "a mistake". He said the fight against terrorism was "not better because of the war in Iraq".

Over the weekend, thousands of anti-war protesters marched in major European capitals and the Spanish Government's plan to pull out its troops from Iraq has received public approval.

The Spanish leaders have moderated their stand by saying that they will continue to maintain their troops in Iraq only under a United Nations mandate and supervision. The pro-war Governments in Italy and Britain are again under public pressure to pull out of Iraq. Mr. Prodi said, "Terrorism must be fought violently but also through a broad effort to address its root causes and foremost among these was the Palestinian problem, which is a widespread view in Europe."

The E.U. officials and national authorities have recently given a fast-track approval to many security measures, which have been languishing for years. The prospects of a pan-European cooperation in law enforcement, intelligence sharing, judicial coordination and above all, imposing tight controls on movement of finances of terrorists are now possible. The measures will be reinforced at the Thursday summit.

Javier Solana, chief of European Union's foreign and security policy coordination, told a German newspaper, "Europe is not at war. But we must oppose terrorism energetically, and we must not change our way of life."

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