In a sign of growing division, Germany and France kept US in dark over plan to avert war Nato split: the background

By Richard Norton-Taylor in Munich, The Guardian (London), Monday 10 February 2003

The Franco-German plan to intensify UN weapons inspections and step up spy flights over Iraq is both a calculated snub to the US and an attempt to derail what is seen as Washington’s determination to go to war.

This became clear as deep divisions between the US and France and Germany over Iraq exploded into the open at a high level security conference in Munich. According to one unconfirmed report in the German magazine Der Spiegel, UN blue-helmet soldiers would be deployed in Iraq and the number of weapons inspectors tripled. Some 150,000 US soldiers based close to Iraq’s borders would remain in place to ensure the peaceful invasion of the blue helmets and secure their mission.

French Mirage reconnaissance planes, German Luna-Drohne unmanned planes, and American U2 spy aircraft would fly over Iraq.

The Russian defence minister, Sergei Ivanov, who attended the Munich conference, said his country had highly skilled inspectors and reconnaissance planes that could take part in a reinforced inspections regime if it was approved by the UN security council.

So bad are the relations between Paris and Berlin on one side and Washington on the other, that Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, was not told anything about the plan, even though his French and German counterparts were at the conference in the Bavarian capital with him.

The most explosive exchanges at Munich were between Mr Rumsfeld and the German foreign minister, Joshka Fischer. In a swipe at Berlin and Paris, the US defence secretary told the conference: It’s not surprising if public opinion is against the use of force if in some countries the leadership says this.

Mr Fischer struck back. Turning to Mr Rumsfeld and switching into English, he retorted: You have to make the case in a democracy. Excuse me, I’m not convinced.

He added: This is the problem, you can’t go to the public when you don’t believe in this. He said he was deeply sceptical about Washington’s approach to Iraq.

Drawing up the battle lines for forthcoming arguments in the UN, Mr Fischer asked why Iraq, rather than the threat posed by al-Qaida terrorists, was the priority now. We have known Saddam Hussein is a horrible dictator for years, he said. Iraq is now more controlled than ever.

Mr Fischer, who also stressed the need for progress towards a Middle East peace settlement, added for good measure that Iraq after an invasion would be occupied for years. The idea that Iraq would suddenly blossom into a democracy, I don’t share, he said.

The bitter dispute, aggravated by French jibes that Washington failed to consult its European allies and ignored Nato when it suited it to do so, is reflected in another row poisoning transatlantic relations.

France, Germany, and Belgium are blocking an agreement under the Nato treaty’s article 5—whereby an attack on one country is considered an attack on all—to provide early warning radar aircraft and American Patriot air defence missiles, and anti-chemical and biological warfare units to Turkey to protect that country from an attack by Iraq.

Mr Rumsfeld called the French and German action inexcusable and beyond comprehension.

Michele Alliot-Marie, the French defence minister, accused the US of jumping the gun and of using the Nato card for its own agenda.

Article 5 referred only to an imminent threat, she said.

She told Mr Rumsfeld: To be an ally means to consult, to find consensus; it is not saying my idea is necessarily the right one and all those who don’t agree should be pushed aside or excluded.

However, she added that France had also never excluded military action against Iraq.

In earlier remarks clearly directed at France and Germany, Mr Rumsfeld told the conference: There are those who counsel that we should delay preparations for war. Ironically, that approach could well make war more likely, not less—because delaying preparations sends a signal of uncertainty.

If the international community showed lack of resolve, he added, there was no chance that Saddam Hussein would disarm voluntarily or flee, and thus little chance of a peaceful outcome.

There were greater differences among Europeans than between Europe and the US, Mr Rumsfeld continued. Germany and France will isolate themselves rather than isolate the US, he said.

He castigated the UN for allowing Iraq to chair its disar mament commission, and for electing Libya—which he also described as a terrorist state —to chair the UN’s human rights commission. He described the decisions as breathtaking.

Germany and France were at the receiving end of withering attacks from a large delegation from the US Congress. A Republican senator and former presidential candidate, John McCain, accused them of calculated self-interest, and of a unilateralism that exposed the sneering about the impulsive cowboy in the White House for the vacuous posturing and obvious misdirection it is.

Unless France and Germany lifted their block on providing Turkey with Nato equipment, said Mr McCain, they would have to answer to those who argued that Iraq could be to Nato what Abyssinia was to the League of Nations—a reference to the blind eye turned to Mussolini’s invasion of what is now Ethiopia in the 1930s.

It was left to Joseph Lieberman, senator from Connecticut and a Democratic presidential contender, to try to restore the badly shaken transatlantic alliance. America still needs Europe, he said, and Europe still needs America.

Washington, Berlin, and Paris were in no mood last night to hear that kind of advice.