18 April 2004	Sunday	27 Safar 1425

BERLIN: The growing anarchy in Iraq and the terror attacks in Madrid are having opposite effects across Europe. One confirms the broad European opposition to the war on Iraq, the other is encouraging an uncompromising stand against Muslim militancy.

A commentary by Mathias Nass, foreign affairs correspondent with the right-wing German weekly Die Zeit illustrates this duality.

Die Zeit had strongly supported the US-led war against Iraq a year ago. This week Nass said the US policy in Iraq had been unconvincing from the very beginning.

After pointing out that "the weapons of mass destruction (that Saddam Hussein allegedly stockpiled) were never found," Nass said Iraq had become a playground for terrorism "only after the US invaded the country".

Nass also condemned "the irresponsible US behaviour after the war". He wrote that an alliance of "secret service agents, dubious Iraqi expatriates and ideologues had conveyed an extremely illusory positive image of Iraq (without Saddam)".

But Nass warns against withdrawal of US and European troops from Iraq. "Nobody, even those who considered the US decision to attack Iraq one year ago as dead wrong, can now stand for a precipitate withdrawal of troops."

At the same time Nass said the attacks in Madrid on March 11 show that Europe will stick together with the United States. " Muslim fundamentalism, which nourishes hatred against the US, has also declared war on liberal, secular Europe," Nass added.

Dualities are arising all over Europe along these lines.

The German government rejects demands to send troops to Iraq or to join the US-led Nato force in the Middle East. And yet minister for foreign relations Joseph Fischer is distancing himself from his own earlier positions to speak of a "reconstruction of the West" in the face of the Iraq crisis.

"Yes, I stick to the transatlantic approach," Fischer says, referring to the central role played by the US-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato).

Besides repeating terminology coined by US neo-conservative ideologues after the attacks of Sept 11, Fischer now affirms that a German- French nucleus - which had opposed the US war plans in Iraq - would be counter-productive for Europe.

Fischer had until recently defended this nucleus as "a gravitational centre" for the development of the European Union (EU).

The Iraq crisis had split the EU in two. Led by Washington, London and Madrid, a "new" Europe supported the US war designs, opposed to the "old" Europe around the French-German nucleus.

But mounting evidence that the US government lied in order to justify the war on Iraq has weakened its old allies in the EU, and created a new momentum for Fischer's old proposal of a European nucleus built around the Berlin-Paris axis.

New Spanish head of government Josi Luis Rodrmguez Zapatero has declared that he will work closely with Germany and France in the EU.

He has announced also that his government would withdraw Spanish troops from Iraq by June 30 unless a United Nations (UN) mandate legalises their status, an announcement welcomed both in Berlin and in Paris.

Leaders in Poland, another member of the occupying coalition, also say now that the US government deceived them into joining the war. "We have been misled into the war," Polish President Alexandre Kwasniewski said last month, referring to US claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

But Kwasniewski said Polish troops would remain in Iraq. "We cannot end our mission in Iraq if that would increase instability," he said.

Friction is developing also between the United States and Britain, so far the most firm ally of US President George W. Bush in Iraq.

Michael Rubin, a former aide to US civilian administrator in Iraq L. Paul Bremer has gone so far as to accuse Britain of betraying common objectives by negotiating agreements with former followers of Saddam Hussein in the Iraqi city Basra, and with Iranian groups in British controlled southern Iraq.-Dawn/The InterPress News Service.