EU leaders move to placate America

EUROPEAN Union leaders vowed yesterday to put differences over the Iraq war behind them and said they were willing to work together and with the United States to rebuild the war-battered Arab country.

Meeting in Athens to sign a treaty opening their bloc to 10 new members, leaders of the 15 EU states also worked on a surprise statement on how the United Nations and the EU could work in Iraq in a way acceptable to Washington.

Britain, Washington’s ally in the Iraq campaign, and France, which bitterly opposed military action, sought to put aside their pre-war tensions.

Prime Minister Tony Blair and President Jacques Chirac met face-to-face for the first time since the war. They did not shake hands in public but did spend 20 minutes chatting in what a British official called a “perfectly amiable” conversation.

Chirac said Paris, which until recently had demanded that the United Nations should be the sole body entitled to handle the Iraq issue, would be flexible in working with the US and British forces now running Iraq.

Washington has made clear it does not intend to let the UN take the leading role in rebuilding Iraq.

“Issue by issue, we have to find the right balance between the role of the United Nations, which must be the essential role, and the American and British forces present on the ground,” Chirac’s spokeswoman Catherine Colonna said.

“We are agreed on the importance of the role of the United Nations,” Blair said after meeting UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.

“We agree there should be respect for humanitarian issues, but also respect for political and reconstruction issues that arise ... I would like to see the United States, ourselves, Europe working in partnership together to make that clear.”

The conciliatory signals built on statements in recent days from France and Germany, another leading anti-war campaigner, indicating they sought a compromise with the US after long opposing Washington for waging war without UN backing.

The informal EU summit had not planned a statement on Iraq because of the split between pro-war Britain and Spain and anti-war France and Germany, EU diplomats said.

But the four managed to agree on a two-part statement calling for an “important” or “essential” role for the United Nations in rebuilding Iraq and for EU help to stabilise it after the overthrow of President Saddam Hussein.