EU tries to mend rift on Iraq

12.00pm

ATHENS - European Union leaders moved to mend their rift over the Iraq war at a two-day summit formally dedicated to the bloc's historic eastward enlargement.

Underscoring the EU's new-found sense of pragmatism on Iraq, diplomats said up to seven European countries might lend troops to a peacekeeping force proposed by the United States for the war-torn Arab country following the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

The Iraq crisis has badly dented the EU's ambitions to play a bigger global role. Britain, Italy, Spain, Denmark and many of the ex-communist newcomers backed the US-led war to oust Saddam, while France, Germany and others strongly opposed it.

However, the mood at the Athens summit, which was dominated by Wednesday's signing of the EU accession treaty admitting 10 new members, was conciliatory and forward-looking.

French President Jacques Chirac said the EU would launch an airlift in the next few days to fly out wounded Iraqis -- especially children -- for urgent hospital treatment in Europe.

The EU leaders held talks with UN Secretary General Kofi Annan on rebuilding Iraq which were due to continue on Thursday. Chirac said the EU would issue a statement on Iraq on Thursday which diplomats said would call for a central role for the United Nations in postwar Iraq and would declare Europe's willingness to help reconstruction work.

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, whose country was the only EU member to take part in the US-led military campaign, said it was important that Europe was trying to move on. "What we are doing is talking about the new Iraq, trying to put behind us the arguments about whether or not the coalition should have taken military action," he told reporters on Wednesday evening.

"What we are hoping for, and I believe we are seeing, are achievements and a changed atmosphere. Atmosphere is really important in diplomacy...to provide a proper basis for the new Iraq to go forward," Straw added.

Earlier, Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen said he was exploring with his colleagues the possibility of European countries contributing to an Iraq peacekeeping force.

Washington has asked Denmark to provide staff to lead a unit of 3000 personnel as part of US-led efforts to stabilise postwar Iraq, a request Copenhagen says it is considering.

Rasmussen said Poland and the three Baltic states -- Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania -- were among states which had expressed an interest in participating. Spain and Italy were also possible contributors, diplomats said.

Annan met the foreign ministers of France, Britain, Germany, Spain and Russia in Athens on Wednesday evening and was due to meet Chirac on Thursday.

Chirac has recently signalled greater flexibility over the extent of the UN's future role, reluctantly accepting that the United States, with troops on the ground, will play the lead role, at least for now, in administering Iraq.

In the planned statement on Iraq, the EU leaders were also expected to stress the need for urgent publication and implementation of the so-called "roadmap" to peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

Summit host Greece, which holds the EU's rotating presidency, hailed Wednesday's signing ceremony as a triumph for peace and security in Europe, a continent long racked by wars, and played down the recent tensions inside the Union.

"We must not think this (crisis over Iraq) is... a big fracture or that it poses difficulties we cannot overcome," Greek Prime Minister Costas Simitis told reporters. President Janez Drnovsek of Slovenia, one of the signatory countries, quoted Chirac as having told him: "Every family gets into a fight every now and then."

The 10 signatory states set to join the EU in May 2004 are Poland, Hungary, Slovenia, Slovakia, Lithuania, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Cyprus and Malta.

The leaders of three other candidates -- Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey -- plus future would-be members such as Croatia and Yugoslavia and "new neighbours" Russia and Ukraine are also in Athens for talks on Thursday on wider European co-operation.

- REUTERS

Herald Feature: Iraq war