BRUSSELS: Don't mention the war! Fifteen months after the fall of Saddam Hussein, the Iraq war has become an enduring dividing line in European politics, poisoning the atmosphere among European Union and Nato leaders.
Despite an Istanbul summit that was meant to heal the wounds, the US-led military alliance is still squabbling over how far European allies who opposed the invasion of Iraq are prepared to let Nato go to help stabilise the country.
The rift has infected every recent European personnel choice and left relations among leaders of the 25-nation EU as bad as seasoned diplomats can recall for a generation.
"This has left deep, festering wounds," a European ambassador said after two EU summits last month. "The atmosphere in that room was noxious." Leaders who supported military action killed Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt's bid to head the executive European Commission, chiefly due to his initiative of staging a European defence mini-summit with fellow anti-war leaders.
The man eventually chosen for the top Brussels job, former centre-right Portuguese Prime Minister Jose Manuel Durao Barroso, faced the toughest questioning at parliamentary confirmation hearings this week over his support for the war.
"You belong to the pro-war camp," one leftist lawmaker bellowed at him. To applause, former French Socialist Prime Minister Michel Rocard asked Barroso whether he would now admit the invasion had been "a mistake".
The nominee responded by saying the question had divided Europe but that given a choice between an ally like the United States and Saddam Hussein, "I could not be neutral".
"CHILD OF WAR": When the candidates to head the European Parliament held a public debate on Tuesday, the only heated clash came over Iraq. "I'm a child of war who felt the isolation of an oppressed country amid the indifference of the West.
My reflex was one of anti-totalitarianism. Take that into account in my position on war in Iraq," former Polish Foreign Minister Bronislaw Geremek, the liberal candidate for the parliament presidency, declared.
His anti-war Socialist rival, Spaniard Josep Borrell, said he too came from a country that had endured totalitarian rule. "Let's not turn this into a contest (about) who suffered the most tyrannies or dictatorships," Borrell said.
"It's very plain. There are those who supported the war in Iraq ... My position is fully reflected in the resolution adopted by the European Parliament," he said.
Anti-war campaigners across Europe rejoiced when former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, a staunch ally of US President George W. Bush, was defeated in a March election.
Any expectation that anti-war governments in France and Germany and members of the Iraq war coalition such as Britain and Italy might bury the hatchet once the fighting ended proved illusory.
A participant at last month's EU summit dinner said German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder shouted at British Prime Minister Tony Blair that their friendship was finished after London helped block Verhofstadt's candidacy. -Reuters