October 18, 2001	Thursday	Rajab 30, 1422

PARIS, Oct 17: The leaders of Britain, France and Germany will meet on Friday on Afghanistan and international developments ahead of a meeting of EU heads of state and government, the office of French President Jacques Chirac said Wednesday.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Chirac, French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder will meet in Ghent, in northwest Belgium, about one hour before the European Council summit begins.

“These three countries needed to meet at the highest level to discuss current international events following the attacks of September 11, and in particular the situation in Afghanistan,” said Chirac’s spokeswoman Catherine Colonna.

The three countries participating in mini-summit are all NATO members and are the EU states most prepared militarily to help with US-led military action. British forces are already taking part in the air strikes on Afghanistan.

EU foreign ministers met Wednesday in Luxembourg to hammer out a common stance for the European Council summit and threw their “total, unreserved solidarity” behind the US retaliatory military action.

The air strikes, which began October 7, are targeting Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban, which is harbouring Osama bin Laden, the Saudi-born dissident blamed by Washington for the September 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.

In an interview to appear in the Thursday edition of the German weekly Die Zeit, Schroeder said the issue of sending German forces to help in the attacks on Afghanistan should not be “taboo”.

“In the current circumstances, what we’re looking at — and what we think is especially possible — us an intervention that might take place also outside of Europe,” he said.

Germany’s foreign policy, he said, had “fundamentally changed” in the last three years, notably with German participation in the peacekeeping forces in Kosovo and, more recently, Macedonia.

The September 11 attacks ahd “changed the world political situation,” he said.—AFP