EU foreign ministers meet in Brussels. A press release summarizes the “Foreign Affairs Council”:
The Council adopted a comprehensive package of EU sanctions against Iran, implementing and accompanying UN Security Council requirements and targeting people, companies and sectors directly involved in Iran’s nuclear programme and other areas. It also adopted conclusions reiterating the EU’s continuing commitment to the goal of a diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear issue.
The Council had a broad strategic discussion on the EU’s future relations with Sudan and adopted conclusions underlining the need for the full implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement.
The High Representative briefed the Council on her recent trip to the Middle East, particularly her visit to Gaza. The Council underlined the need for the revival of the economy of Gaza and repeated the EU’s call for the proximity talks to lead as soon as possible to the resumption of direct peace negotiations leading to a settlement on the basis of a two-state solution within 24 months.
Ministers discussed the Western Balkans over lunch. They stressed the need to recreate momentum for change in Bosnia and Herzegovina after the elections in October. The also discussed Kosovo, following the International Court of Justice’s ruling of last week.
The Council adopted a declaration condemning the execution of the French citizen Michel Germaneau who had been held hostage by the Al-Qaida Organisation in the Islamic Maghreb (AQMI).
The Council also adopted conclusions on Kyrgyzstan and the European Neighbourhood Policy and a decision extending the mandate of the European Union monitoring mission in Georgia (EUMM Georgia) by twelve months.
More details here.
Meeting also as “General Affairs Council”, EU foreign ministers adopted a decision establishing the European External Action Service (EEAS) and setting out its organisation and functioning. The decision can be downloaded here. The press release adds:
The creation of the EEAS is one of the most significant changes introduced by the Treaty of Lisbon, which entered into force on 1 December 2009. It is aimed at making the EU’s external action more coherent and efficient, thereby increasing the EU’s influence in the world.
The EEAS will assist Catherine Ashton, High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, in fulfilling her mandate. It will work in cooperation with the diplomatic services of the member states and comprise officials from relevant departments of the General Secretariat of the Council and of the Commission, as well as staff seconded from the national diplomatic services of the member states.
The “General Affairs Council” also gave green light for opening membership talks with Iceland.
On the EU Iran sanctions, see a New York Times report. For more press reports about the EU foreign ministers meeting, go to Global Europe’s News&Views section (”EU foreign affairs”), here.
Turkey to ignore EU sanctions on Iran. The Financial Times reports:
Mehmet Simsek, the finance minister, told the Financial Times that Turkey would not shy away from promoting closer trade links with Iran. “We will fully implement UN resolutions but when it comes to individual countries’ demands for extra sanctions we do not have to,” said Mr Simsek. (…) “The facilitation of trade that is not prohibited under UN resolution should and will continue.” If a trade deal needs to be financed, added Mr Simsek, “we will have to find a way to pay for it”. (…)
His comments came as the International Energy Agency confirmed that a state-owned Turkish refiner, Tupras, had stepped in to supply Iran after several international companies stopped selling the country refined petroleum.
Meanwhile Turkey’s foreign economic relations board said the country’s ports, notably Mersin and Trabzon, would try to handle some of the trade with Iran that has been going through Dubai. The Gulf emirate is steadily restricting its economic ties with Tehran. Samet Inanir, a strategy counsellor at the economic relations board, said Istanbul could also offer an alternative to Dubai for Iranian investors in real estate. He noted that more than 120 Iranian companies based in Dubai had recently applied to their country’s embassy for information about doing business in Turkey. (…)
People close to the Turkish government suggest that Ankara will watch the behaviour of Russia and China to gauge the extent to which it can afford to ignore unilateral US sanctions. Chinese companies have also been supplying Iran with petroleum.
Cameron strongly backs EU membership for Turkey. The BBC reports:
David Cameron is to argue strongly for Turkey’s membership of the European Union, saying he is “angry” at the slow pace of negotiations. On his first visit to Turkey as prime minister, Mr Cameron will say he will “fight” for Turkey’s bid to join the EU and to become a “great European power”. (…)
Mr Cameron – who arrived in Ankara on Monday – is expected to agree a new strategic partnership with Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan during his visit.
In a speech on Tuesday, Mr Cameron will say he wants to “pave the road” for Turkey to join the EU and criticise those who want to delay the process. A European Union without Turkey at its heart is “not stronger but weaker….not more secure but less…not richer but poorer,” he is expected to say. “I’m here to make the case for Turkey’s membership of the EU. And to fight for it.”
Referring to former French leader General de Gaulle’s efforts to block British membership of the EU in the 1960s, he is expected to make an apparent swipe at some other EU countries’ attitude to Turkey. “We know what it’s like to be shut out of the club. But we also know that these things can change.” “When I think about what Turkey has done to defend Europe as a Nato ally, and what Turkey is doing today in Afghanistan alongside our European allies, it makes me angry that your progress towards EU membership can be frustrated in the way it has been…” “My view is clear. I believe it is just wrong to say Turkey can guard the camp but not be allowed to sit inside the tent.” (…)
Describing himself as the “strongest possible advocate” for greater Turkish influence in Europe, Mr Cameron will say that those who oppose EU membership are driven by either protectionism, narrow nationalism or prejudice. “Those who wilfully misunderstand Islam. They see no difference between real Islam and the distorted version of the extremists. They think the problem is Islam itself. And they think the values of Islam can just never be compatible with the values of other religions, societies or cultures.” “All of these arguments are just plain wrong. And as a new government in Britain, I want us to be at the forefront of an international effort to defeat them.”
While praising Turkey’s secular and democratic traditions, Mr Cameron is likely to stress that Turkey must continue to push forward “aggressively” with economic and political reforms to maintain momentum towards EU membership.
Stressing the vital role Turkey plays in the region, he will say it has a “unique influence” in helping to build a stable Afghanistan through political and economic co-operation and fostering understanding between Israel and the Arab world.
He will also deliver a firm message to Iran, further sanctions against whom Turkey opposes, saying there is no other “logic” to Tehran’s uranium enrichment programme other than to produce a bomb. “So we need Turkey’s help now in making it clear to Iran just how serious we are about engaging fully with the international community,” he will say.
Ashton on the EU’s new diplomatic service. Catherine Ashton has an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal in which she presents the EAS:
Let me start with a confession: The European Union’s critics are sometimes right. The EU can be too slow, too cumbersome and too bureaucratic. I want to help to put that right in the way the EU works with the rest of the world.
Our project has an ungainly name, the European External Action Service (EAS), but a bold and simple purpose: to give the EU a stronger voice around the world, and greater impact on the ground.
In my first six months as the EU’s high representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, I have seen for myself what the EU can do when we pull together: In Gaza where EU-funded schools are giving an education and dignity to hundreds of girls and boys, and where we are ready to do more to help end the blockade; in Haiti where we are giving shelter to the homeless and helping the government with its strategy for long-term reconstruction; in the Balkans where we are promoting political and economic reforms and preparing the region’s countries to join the EU; and in East Africa where we our naval operation is deterring and capturing pirates at sea while our teams are working on-shore to help bring stability to Somalia and development to the region.
We do a lot to promote security, to protect the vulnerable, and to root out poverty. But too much depends on ad-hoc arrangements and the creativity of individuals. We achieve comprehensive strategies despite our structures, not because of them.
Until now, EU work around the world has been guided by two masters: the External Affairs Commissioner and the Council’s High Representative. There has been one chain of command for our development efforts, and a completely separate chain of command for our security activities. Too often good people have been hampered by poor systems.
That is why it matters that the 27 member states of the European Union, each with a proud history in foreign affairs, have given their backing to the creation of a unified EAS, following the earlier endorsement by the European Parliament and the European Commission.
It is not easy to get the EU’s three main institutions to agree. All the more so when it comes to setting up a new structure, moving people into new roles, adjusting budgets, and changing the way we prepare and take decisions. Usually in the EU, institutional change of this order only happens once every 25 years or so.
But the real significance of yesterday’s decision lies outside Brussels. Our aim is to do foreign policy in a modern way, differently and better. Not to compete with or duplicate what our member states are doing, but to add value and play to our strength of acting as a union. That is how we can best make a difference on the ground and, over time, enhance global security and stability.
In particular, we need to tackle the two main areas where we are under-performing: First, get more unity amongst EU member states to bring our combined political weight to bear; second, develop more integrated strategies, so that we are more effective on the ground.
If we can do both, Europe will be able to play its full part in addressing the many challenges that affect global security and prosperity. The key word in that sentence is global. We live in a world where challenges and change are global in nature, as are their consequences. Terrorism, organized crime and the proliferation of weapons; energy security, climate change and the competition for natural resources; trade, investment and financial flows: These are all global phenomena. All of them also happen to be complex and interlinked.
So to respond to challenges that are global and complex, only integrated strategies will do. The value of the EAS will lie in its being able to bring together the many levers of influence that the European Union has—economic and political, plus civil and military crisis management tools—in support of a single political strategy. More than any other actor in the world today, the EU will be able to mobilize such a wide a range of instruments, with the weight and legitimacy of 27 democratic countries behind it.
This is not, as some critics say, a grab for power; but it is, unashamedly, a grab for effectiveness. The EAS can make a positive difference—and I am determined that it will.
Wikileaks on Afghanistan: Nothing new, commentators say. Richard Cohen writes in the Washington Post:
The news in that massive data dump provided by the dauntingly mysterious Wikileaks (who? what?) to one American and two European publications is that there is no news at all. We already knew that the war in Afghanistan was not going well. We already knew — or, in the words of the New York Times, “harbored strong suspicions” — that Pakistan’s military spy service was aiding the Taliban (with friends like this . . .) and we already knew that Afghanistan’s army and police would be reformed and able to stand up to the Taliban some time around when pigs fly or Washington balances the budget. No need to wait by the phone.
Andrew Exum (Center for a New American Security) says in the New York Times:
Anyone who has spent the past two days reading through the 92,000 military field reports and other documents made public by the whistle-blower site WikiLeaks may be forgiven for wondering what all the fuss is about. I’m a researcher who studies Afghanistan and have no regular access to classified information, yet I have seen nothing in the documents that has either surprised me or told me anything of significance.
Fred Kaplan comments at Slate:
Just because some documents are classified doesn’t mean that they’re news or even necessarily interesting. A case in point is the cache of 92,000 secret documents about the Afghanistan war that someone leaked to WikiLeaks, which passed them on to the New York Times, Britain’s Guardian, and Der Spiegel in Germany. (…) Some of the conclusions to be drawn from these files: Afghan civilians are sometimes killed. Many Afghan officials and police chiefs are corrupt and incompetent. Certain portions of Pakistan’s military and intelligence service have nefarious ties to the Taliban. If any of this startles you, then welcome to the world of reading newspapers. Today’s must be the first one you’ve read.
Daniel Markey (Council on Foreign Relations) says:
The online release of a mountain of U.S. intelligence documents is tantalizing for being stamped “secret,” sensational because of WikiLeaks’ impressive media strategy, and politically relevant because it arrives in an atmosphere of increasing disillusionment over prospects for victory in Afghanistan. But very little in these documents is fundamentally new or different from what we’ve been hearing for years. Above all, anyone shocked to learn that the Taliban have supporters in Pakistan, including elements within the Pakistan intelligence services, has not been paying attention.
The leaks might nevertheless have an impact on the Afghan war efforts. The New York Times reports:
The disclosure of a six-year archive of classified military documents increased pressure on President Obama to defend his military strategy as Congress prepares to deliberate financing of the Afghanistan war.
Afghanistan not “the graveyard of empires”. Christian Caryl writes at Foreign Policy:
It’s the mother of all clichés. Almost no one can resist it. (…) Afghanistan, we’re told, is “the graveyard of empires.” The Victorian British and the Soviet Union, the story goes, were part of a long historical continuum of arrogant conquerors that met their match in the country’s xenophobic, fanatical, trigger-happy tribesmen. Given a record like that, it’s obvious that the effort by the United States and its NATO allies to stabilize the shaky government in Kabul is doomed to fail. (…)
As Thomas Barfield pointed out to me the other day, for most of its history Afghanistan has actually been the cradle of empires, not their grave. Barfield, an anthropologist at Boston University, has been studying Afghanistan since the early 1970s, and he has just published a book — Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History — that takes issue with the hoary stereotypes that continue to inform our understanding of the place.
One of those myths is that Afghanistan is inherently unconquerable thanks to the fierceness of its inhabitants and the formidable nature of its terrain. But this isn’t at all borne out by the history. “Until 1840 Afghanistan was better known as a ‘highway of conquest’ rather than the ‘graveyard of empires,’” Barfield points out. “For 2,500 years it was always part of somebody’s empire, beginning with the Persian Empire in the fifth century B.C.”
ICC ruling on Kosovo: A right to secession? At Project Syndicate, Robert Howse and Ruti Teitel say that the UN world court’s ruling has been widely misinterpreted:
The World Court’s recent ruling on Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence is being widely touted as giving a green light to secessionist movements to gain statehood. According to Kosovo President Fatmir Sejdiu, “The decision finally removes all doubts that countries which still do not recognize the Republic of Kosovo could have.” But this reading is largely wishful thinking by those who support secession. The Court’s non-binding advisory opinion responded to a narrow question posed by the United Nations General Assembly: whether declaring independence is legal under international law. The judges rightly held that there is no international rule preventing a group from stating its intention or wish to form a state. But they said nothing about the terms and conditions that apply to following through on this intention – i.e., the act of secession itself.
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