Weakened when he has not even taken over the presidency of the European Union and due to the attacks of his predecessor, Luxembourg’s Jean-Claude Juncker, Tony Blair has found allies in the French media to contest the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). We have read his bad faith arguments comparing agricultural spending with research spending. However, this comparison is absurd as the former is included essentially in the community field while the latter is a responsibility of the state.
The presidents of the UMP groups in the French National Assembly and the Senate, Bernard Accoyer and Josselin de Rohan, express their indignation in Le Figaro against what they call anti-CAP propaganda and try to highlight the merits of this policy. Thanks to this policy, Europe has a world level competitive agriculture and high-quality diet. Taking the offensive, they note that the two biggest agricultural health crisis of recent years (foot-and-mouth disease and mad cow disease) originated in Great Britain.
According to the French media and part of the British, the only one responsible for the failure of the Brussels conference is Jacques Chirac. After the rejection of the European Constitutional Treaty (ECT), France is now further isolated after this meeting. However, there are no signs of this result in the statements by European leaders. Even more revealing, Labor senior officials speak in the British press about ways to overcome the isolation of their country in Europe.
After former British Minister for European Affairs Denis MacShane, it is now the turn of former Defense Minister Robin Cook to regret the British inability to agglutinate the European states around its projects. In The Guardian, he asks London to make efforts to show a more reassuring image and, for that, he recommends that the speech to the Union should be mainly focused on social issues. It is also urgent to develop links with the other European capitals.
However, while the British lack contacts in Europe, they do have them outside the continent to help their political agenda advance. The Independent reproduces excerpts of a speech given by the General Secretary of the Commonwealth, Don McKinnon, during a conference with the ambassadors of the organization in Geneva. He attacks the CAP retaking Blair’s arguments and urges the countries of the Commonwealth to establish an alliance against the European agricultural policy through negotiations with the WTO, and not through European negotiations.

French Green European Parliament member, Alain Lipietz, shows his concern in Le Monde over the budget crisis and sees it a consequence of the French rejection of the European Constitutional Treaty (ECT). He believes that this rejection stirred up national tensions in Europe adding that there is a real threat that the unity of the Union may dissolve. He urges the European Parliament to study the issue and to create a project for the reactivation of Europe, this time with the support of the peoples.
Historian and economist, Immanuel Wallerstein, analyzes in Al-Ahram the rejection of the European Constitutional Treaty (ECT). He thinks that the “No” vote in the French referendum is the consequence of an accumulation of diverse opinions from the euro-skeptical and of the anti-globalization left, which caused Washington’s rejoicing. If the anti-globalization left wants to take advantage of this victory, it also needs to deal with a delicate strategy against the other two groups that applaud the “No”. They must move away from the euro-skeptical and bet for an evolution of geopolitical relations that does not favor Washington.
Former KGB (USSR intelligence service) boss and former Russian Prime Minsiter, Evgueni Primakov, is interviewed by Gazeta SNG. He believes that Russia has a very naïve vision of the actions that must be carried out in the former Soviet republics and sees the US policy as a caricature. Washington does not choose systematically the field of power and the opposition but he supports them both and, at the appropriate moment, he supports the one that best fits his own interests. That is what the United States is currently doing in Uzbekistan. However, he believes that Washington is playing with fire in the case of the former Soviet republics by associating itself with the Islamists in Uzbekistan or by making efforts to violate the unspoken agreement of not having former Soviet republics join NATO. Nevertheless, he thinks that the United States will never take that step. As anyone can see, this pact was already violated when the Baltic countries joined the Atlantic Alliance. In addition, with false naivety, Primakov seems surprised over Washington’s financing Putin’s opposition as elections were democratic.
The member of the Israeli secret services, Reuven Daniel, backs Islam Karimov in Ha’aretz. For him, the western powers play a dangerous role by weakening someone that has to be regarded as an ally against Islamic fundamentalism. Considering a situation of clash of civilizations, the author criticizes that fact that western powers abandon Karimov in the interest of radical Muslim groups.

Voltaire Network