BERLIN: US allies in Europe are deeply fearful that the Bush administration is moving inexorably toward a military clash with Iraq, and while they are being blunt in their opposition, they also are beginning to wonder if Washington cares what they think.

Europe has a long-standing pattern of hesitating in the face of US determination to act militarily, followed by unifying with the Americans as hostilities loom and then begin. But this time, the Europeans insist, they are firmly opposed to expanding the war on terrorism to Iraq.

“No support,” Josef Joffe, a German foreign-policy analyst and editor of the weekly Die Zeit, said in an interview. “Will Europe do anything to hinder it if the US goes ahead? No. Will they deny things like overflight rights? No. But active political support? None.”

Publicly, European leaders are using bullhorn diplomacy to condemn what they view as a belligerent unilateralism that will undermine, if not destroy, the solidarity created in the aftermath of Sept. 11.

“The stunning and unexpectedly rapid success of the military campaign in Afghanistan was a tribute to American capacity,” Chris Patten, the European Union’s external affairs commissioner, wrote in Friday’s Financial Times of London.

“But it has perhaps reinforced some dangerous instincts: that the projection of military power is the only basis of true security; that the US can rely only on itself; and that allies may be useful as an optional extra but that the US is big enough to manage without them if it must,” he wrote.

In today’s world, no country in Europe is a superpower. That reality has tended to make Europeans more respectful of talk and international institutions as ways to settle disputes. Moreover, waging war without others’ help is simply not an option for most of the countries. While a number of European countries are helping US forces in the Afghan theatre, the conflict has underlined again the gap in US and European military capabilities.

In Afghanistan, said Joffe, “people watched with amazement as this (US) global military machine meshed. And there is fear of that power.” Some Europeans have said that the victory in Afghanistan was an opportunity for international cooperation and nation building, a loathed term in the White House.

“We have to do all we can to bolster weak or failing states and prevent them from falling into the clutches of the Osama bin Ladens of this world,” said Patten. European skepticism about strikes on Iraq had been building for weeks, but blossomed after President Bush’s State of the Union address, in which he referred to Iraq, Iran and North Korea as an “axis of evil.”

French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine called the Bush administration’s approach “simplistic.” He was joined by German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, a pro-American politician who risked the political future of his party, the historically pacifist Greens, to support the US campaign in Afghanistan.

“The international coalition against terror is not the basis to take action against someone - least of all unilaterally,” Fischer told the German newspaper Die Welt. “All European foreign ministers see it that way. That is why the phrase ‘axis of evil’ leads nowhere.”

Even Britain, the United States’ closest European ally in the war on terrorism, has sounded skeptical about the axis of evil. Foreign Minister Jack Straw, in a visit to Washington three days after Bush spoke those words, brushed aside the remarks as domestic politicking. “The president’s State of the Union speech is best understood in the context of the midterm elections in November, it seems to me,” Straw told the British media.

Without evidence of Iraqi involvement in the Sept 11 attacks - of which there is none, they say - the Europeans question the legality of military action and fear it could cause chaos in the Arab world, cast the United States as bent on hegemony and spark intense anti-Americanism in Europe.

“We know which nations’ representatives and citizens were fighting alongside the Taliban and where their activities were financed from,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said last week. “Iraq is not on this list.”

European officials insist that there are still diplomatic and economic avenues to ensure that Iraq is not developing weapons of mass destruction. Fischer said Iraq should be pressed to allow UN inspectors to return to the country and that “the sanctions regime must be further developed so that Iraq cannot produce or bring on line weapons of mass destruction.” Patten said the Iraqi opposition could be bolstered.

Despite the differences, Europeans say they share the Bush administration’s goal of bringing down the Iraqi leader. “We would like a new government leadership in Iraq, primarily because the people need a new government,” said Karsten Voigt, coordinator of German-American relations at the Foreign Ministry in Berlin. “The differences start on how to achieve that. We need a serious debate across the Atlantic.”—Dawn/LAT-WP News Service (c) The Washington Post.