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EU hopes to move beyond Iraq at Washington summit

24/06/2003 12:08
The European Union plans to use a Washington summit this week to turn a new leaf after a tempestuous few months in the transatlantic relationship, officials said on Monday.

Beyond Iraq, the world's two biggest trading blocs remain at serious odds over a host of issues including a spate of commercial disputes and foreign-policy headaches such as Iran.

But ahead of Wednesday's meeting between US President George W. Bush and Greek Prime Minister Costas Simitis, the EU's current chairman, officials in Brussels were at pains to stress the ties that bind the two sides.

"This summit is extraordinarily rich in deliverables that will have a concrete impact on the lives of our citizens," said a European source.

"There is much more to the EU-US relationship than military action in Iraq," he said, while a senior US diplomat welcomed "a new realism" in Europe.

The EU is fresh from a summit in Greece that saw heads of government underline the "fundamental importance" of their ties with Washington.

And they hope a new European security strategy, commissioned after the EU's disarray over Iraq, could help to build bridges.

The EU has agreed a plan to fight the spread of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), including the use of force if necessary, in what is seen as a notable shift towards US thinking.

The rethink in diplomatic strategy has become all the more important with the Union expanding from 15 to 25 members next May, many of them former communist states which have much to thank the United States for.

Bush and Simitis, joined by European Commission president Romano Prodi and members of the US cabinet, have a lot to cram in to their two-and-a-half hours of talks at the White House.

Among the agenda items emphasised by the EU are:

-- The signing of mutual legal assistance and extradition accords, which for instance will give US law enforcers access to bank accounts in the EU.

The EU, however, says the extradition agreement will never lead to an EU citizen being extradited if he or she could face the death penalty in the United States.

-- Broadening the US "container security initiative" (CSI), part of the war against terrorism, from individual ports in Europe to an EU-wide agreement also applicable to the 10 countries joining the bloc next year.

-- Launch of talks on a global US-EU open skies accord, freeing up transatlantic air travel. The EU's Court of Justice has struck down bilateral aviation accords between member states and the United States.

-- a partnership against WMD in light of the new EU strategy.

-- joint research on hydrogen fuel-cell technology in a 3.7-billion-dollar initiative to make cars greener.

Citing the CSI and open skies negotiations, EU officials said the Bush administration now recognises that it can no longer "cherry-pick" agreements with individual member states but has to deal with the bloc as a whole.

Unlike Iraq, the EU has presented a united front on the International Criminal Court, one of several issues that could dent the mood of rapprochement at Wednesday's summit.

Other hot-button topics are differing approaches to Iran as well as trade battles over genetically modified food, steel and a US campaign against corporate abuses that Brussels says discriminates against European companies.

But the United States is also keen to accentuate the positive.

"I'm quite impressed with how substantive and productive this summit is going to be," the US diplomat said.

"Particularly after the bruising few months we've had, we need to send a strong message to our publics of how much we can work together," he said.