BRUSSELS: Keeping up appearances is an important part of diplomacy, but it was hard for Europeans to take the crude rebuff by Ariel Sharon when he refused to let a high-ranking EU mission visit a beleaguered Yasser Arafat in Ramallah last week.

Javier Solana, the EU’s foreign policy chief, and his fellow countryman, the Spanish foreign minister, Joseph Pique, held their usual photocalls with Shimon Peres, Israel’s foreign minister, but they were told bluntly that they would not be seeing the Palestinian leader.

Israel had already warned them that Jose Maria Aznar, the Spanish premier and current EU president, would not be allowed in. Europe’s insistence that Arafat remained an indispensable partner for peace seemed to some to make the bid to see him a gamble worth taking. Others thought it an avoidable and shambolic display of disarray and embarrassment.

To add insult to injury, Sharon’s tanks trundled briefly aside to allow the US envoy, Anthony Zinni, to talk to the PLO chief. The message was unmistakable: Israel will allow US involvement, up to a point, but Europeans should stay at home. “Hugging and kissing” with Arafat would break his isolation, explained a Jerusalem spokesman, conscious of Solana’s touchy-freely Mediterranean style.

It was no surprise, then, that calls for EU sanctions against Israel were renewed as demonstrators from Brussels to Athens protested against the West Bank offensive. Romano Prodi, president of the European commission, toughened up the message, urging an immediate pullback and signalling that the EU’s association agreement with Israel, giving preferential trade access but requiring observance of a standard human rights clause, could be called into question.

Past experience offers some clues to the way ahead in the labyrinthine world of EU foreign policy. Left to itself, the supranational commission might be tough. As custodian of the EU’s huge aid budget, it is the world’s largest donor to Arafat’s Palestinian Authority. It has watched in dismay as millions of euros of damage have been done by Israeli attacks, and Palestinian suicide bombings have destroyed what remained of the peace process.

Chris Patten, the external affairs commissioner, has often spoken out in the European parliament, home to what passes for pan-European public opinion. This week, a resolution tabled by the socialist bloc is to call for suspension of the association pact.

Yet it will make little difference. The EU’s unwieldy structures and tortuous divisions of power do not make for coherent foreign policies. Patten, who doles out the cash, answers to the commission. Solana, who has none, works for the 15 governments. No one in Brussels or any national capital has anything like the US dollars three billion the US provides annually to Israel. Ending preferential tariffs would be little more than a symbolic blow and a signal that tougher sanctions could follow.

Mutual distrust is intense. Many Israelis still see Europe as the graveyard of the Jewish people during the second world war. Attacks on synagogues and cemeteries, or newspaper caricatures with an anti-semitic tinge, are disturbing. Pro-Palestinian protesters are often of Arab or Muslim origin, and living reminders that the Middle East is truly Europe’s backyard.

In its relentless search for a global diplomatic role to match its economic weight, the EU has made real progress since Solana was appointed two years ago. As Prodi pointed out, when crisis first erupted in the Balkans, everyone asked what the US response would be. Now the question posed about the Middle East is what Europe will do.

But answering remains difficult because of nuanced but significant differences between member states. Britain is instinctively closer to the US, at least when Downing Street is running the show. Germany, with its lingering post-Holocaust guilt, is reluctant to get tough with Israel, as are the Netherlands and Denmark. Among the big countries, France is the most outspoken in criticizing Sharon, but was helpless last month as London and Berlin torpedoed its call for new political initiatives.

Spain, in the hot seat of the rotating presidency, has a classically southern perspective and commitment to the EU’s Barcelona process of dialogue with the Maghreb and wider Arab world. Belgium, whose foreign minister, Louis “the Lip” Michel, has a reputation as a maverick, has repeatedly demanded a crackdown on Israel. Finland is a hardliner, too.

The next move depends on the meeting in Madrid when the US, Russia, the EU and the UN discuss the escalating crisis. EU diplomats admit that the situation has never been so grim.

“Europe’s problem,” complained another, “is that we have to deal with the overwhelming dominance of the US in this part of the world, and its unique leverage over Israel. It’s just a fact of life.”

Europeans suspect privately that even if there is no explicit American “green light” to let Sharon finish the job, there is at least an understanding that military operations can continue until the secretary of state, Colin Powell, makes his leisurely way to Jerusalem on Friday.

Public posturing apart, it is already clear that dousing the flames in Nablus, Bethlehem — and Tel Aviv — remains a job that only the Americans can do, if anyone can. It is a sobering reminder that to perform competently on the world stage, Europe has a lot of catching up to do.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service.