Intelligence

Spain pulls in its horns - and forfeits its influence

Spain pulls in its horns - and forfeits its influence - International Herald Tribune

By Victoria Burnett Published: August 17, 2007

MADRID: As the international media followed every
detail of Nicolas Sarkozy's American vacation last week, it was
difficult, from Madrid, not to marvel at the very different scenario in
Andalusia, where José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero was taking his holiday.

Unlike the French president, for Zapatero there was no hobnobbing
with other world leaders, no pack of foreign paparazzi clicking in his
wake and certainly no public appearances in his swimming trunks. He
walked on the beach, fully dressed, and was snapped kissing a young
immigrant boy.

That's about as international as the summer vacation is likely to
get for Spain's stay-at-home leader, who, both at work and at play,
shows little interest in globetrotting.

A decade of soaring economic growth and corporate expansion overseas
has put Spain in the big leagues, but the country's political profile
is shrinking under the leadership of a man deeply preoccupied with
domestic reform and lacking in international experience.

"He is not there. It's as if he were not interested," says José
María de Areilza, a former foreign-policy adviser to Zapatero's
predecessor José María Aznar.

"This is a media-driven world, and you have to stay in the picture."

Zapatero leaves it to other heads of state to clock up the air
miles, receiving far more official visits than he makes. Though broadly
liked, diplomats say, he has annoyed a handful of foreign capitals -
most recently Tokyo - by repeatedly postponing visits or cutting them
short.

In the first seven months of the year, he was visited by nearly 20
foreign leaders, plus Ban Ki-Moon, the United Nations secretary
general; Condoleezza Rice, the U.S. secretary of state; and Tony Blair,
the former British prime minister, who had just become Middle East
envoy. For Zapatero's part, he traveled a few times to Brussels and
Berlin, and visited Poland, Mexico and Panama.

Charles Grant, head of the Center for European Reform, a think tank
based in London, says the decline in Spain's influence on Zapatero's
watch has been "astonishing."

During the governments of the Socialist prime minister Felipe
González and the conservative Aznar, who followed him, Spain punched
above its weight, he says. But despite a team of respected diplomats,
like Miguel Ángel Moratinos, Spain's current foreign minister, and
Alberto Navarro, the secretary of state for European affairs, "Spain is
not one of the key players who decides what happens" in Europe.

"The way the EU works, the prime minister is very important," Grant says.

Zapatero's limited language skills and a career in domestic politics
go some way to explaining his low international profile. The
47-year-old prime minister won his first seat as a Socialist deputy in
1986 and is fluent only in Spanish.

But it is also a question of priorities. Since he came to power in
April 2004, Zapatero has been consumed by domestic politics: his
attempts to broker peace with the violent Basque separatist group ETA,
and a series of social and political reforms.

Some of Zapatero's supporters say he pulled in Spain's horns partly
to correct what they see as Aznar's missteps. Aznar cultivated a close
alliance with the United States at the expense of Spain's relations
with some European allies. He took Spain into the deeply unpopular war
in Iraq, for which the country was punished by an Islamist bomb attack
in March 2004 that cost 191 lives. Icarus-like, Spain flew too close to
the sun of international influence and burned its wings.

Where Zapatero has put energy into foreign policy initiatives, he
has chalked up some successes. The government's commitment to engaging
sub-Saharan Africa - where Spain has opened half a dozen new embassies
in the past three years - has won plaudits from international officials
and African leaders.

Zapatero deftly negotiated a generous allotment of EU development
funds for Spain between 2007 and 2012, despite the country's rising
economic status. The government also won help from other European
countries for Spain's efforts to intercept migrant boats from Africa.

But Spain's reluctance to allow its troops to deploy in the
dangerous southwest of Afghanistan, where NATO forces are fighting the
Taliban, has frustrated other members of the alliance. Spain has about
700 troops under NATO's command in Afghanistan's relatively stable
western corner and some 1,100 in the United Nations peacekeeping force
in Lebanon.

The fact the government sells its overseas deployments as
peacekeeping missions, rather than combat operations, has done little
to strengthen the Spanish public's weak stomach for military casualties.

Meanwhile, well-intentioned but nebulous initiatives like the
Alliance of Civilizations are unlikely to yield concrete results in the
short term, while Spain's proposal last year for a new Middle East
peace plan - announced as a joint initiative with France and Italy -
seems to have been stillborn.

José Ignacio Torreblanca, an expert in foreign policy at the Royal
Elcano Institute, a Madrid-based think tank, says Zapatero's domestic
efforts are diplomacy of a kind in that they are converting Spain into
a reference for other countries. The ease with which Spain has absorbed
Europe's fastest-growing immigrant population, and laws that extend the
rights of women and gays, have caught the eye of other European policy
makers.

Some diplomats and analysts think Zapatero will start flapping his
diplomatic wings in the run-up to the March general election, and
concentrate more on the outside world if he is re-elected.

For Spain to make its mark, says Areilza, the former foreign-policy
adviser, it needs a bigger, more effective foreign-affairs apparatus
and a larger military budget so it can contribute meaningfully to
overseas military and peacekeeping operations.

Zapatero will have to get stuck into some of the strategic debates
that keep other European leaders awake at night, like Iran's nuclear
ambitions or how to handle Russia, says Grant of the Center for
European Reform.

But Zapatero is not a Great Game diplomat.

"He's not a Winston Churchill. He doesn't feel comfortable in these
strategic debates about that hard world out there," says Torreblanca.
Zapatero is most at ease in the role of listener and conciliator, who
builds up his interlocutors' support before convincing them they can
give him what he needs and get what they need in the process.

Torreblanca says Zapatero sees international politics as a
"non-zero-sum game," one in which everyone can come out ahead:
"Zapatero says, 'Let's make the cake bigger for everyone, and then I'll
get my piece at the end of it all.' "

August 20, 2007 at 09:37 AM in Europe | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Slobodan Milosevic Leaves the Court

Kommersant: Slobodan Milosevic Leaves the Court

// The last president of Yugoslavia dies in The Hague
Death
Former president of Yugoslavia Slobodan Milosevic died on Saturday in the prison of The Hague Tribunal. He was the main defendant in the bloody Yugoslavian drama at the end of the last century. After he left politics, and even now, after his death, two great myths that accompanied him through his political life continue to live. The first is that he fought to preserve Yugoslavia and the unity of the Serbian people. The second is that he was a great friend of Russia. In reality, Yugoslavia, the Serbs, Russia – they were all just small change in Milosevic's big game, the grand prize in which was absolute power.
The End of Milosevic

The last time Slobodan Milosevic was seen alive was at 4:30 p.m. on Friday. A day earlier, Kommersant has learned, he spoke with his brother Borislav, who lives in Moscow. Borislav Milosevic said that his brother was feeling fine at that time. At 9:30 a.m. on Saturday, guards making their rounds at The Hague Tribunal Prison found Slobodan Milosevic in his cell apparently dead. They called for the prison doctor, who confirmed his death. Later in the day, the death of the former Yugoslavian president was announced officially. It was reported that the most likely cause of death was high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease, which he is known to have suffered from.

His close associates began to claim that he was poisoned, however. Milosevic's lawyer Zdenko Tomanovic suddenly recalled that his client had expressed concern in recent days that someone was trying to poison him. Tomanovic said that Milosevic sent a letter to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Friday saying that they were giving him the wrong medicine and asking him for help. The lawyer did not reveal any other contents of the letter but said that Milosevic was being treated with medicines used “only for leprosy and tuberculosis.” Mikhail Kamynin, an official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, said immediately that no letters had been received from Milosevic.

In circles connected with the tribunal, it is thought that the claims of poisoning are conjecture, or fabrications intended to prepare the public for the news traces may be found in his blood of substances that were not prescribed to him by Hague doctors. On the tribunal, they suspect that Milosevic was taking his own medications of some sort. In January, the prosecution said, a confidential report on an analysis of Milosevic's blood was given to the judges on the tribunal. In the report, it said that the defendant “is manipulating medicinal substances” by not taking the ones prescribed to him by doctors, but taking massive amounts of other substances that he was receiving from unknown sources, which was leading to a deterioration of his health. The court doctors' facts were confirmed by authoritative independent experts. The prosecutor concluded that the defendant was intentionally affecting his medical condition with the goal of being sent to Moscow for treatment.

In December, Milosevic asked the judges' permission to travel to Moscow to Bakulev Cardiovascular Surgery Center for examination. In January, the Russian government presented guarantees to The Hague Tribunal for “the personal safety of Milosevic during his stay in Russia and his return to The Hague within the time limit set by the tribunal.”

On February 24, however, the judges refused Milosevic's request. They stated that the defendant had not shown that Bakulev Center was the only place where he could be examined. But the main impediment was that the judges simply did not believe that he would return.

An autopsy was performed on Milosevic's body yesterday at the Dutch Forensics Institute. Relatives of the former president insisted that the autopsy and toxicological analysis be performed in Moscow, but the tribunal refused that request, instead allowing pathologists from Belgrade and Moscow to be present at the autopsy in The Netherlands.

The majority of the former president's supporters reject the possibility of suicide. “Milosevic would never do harm to himself,” his legal adviser Stephen Kaye said,” even though both of his parents committed suicide. The administration of Scheveningen Prison, where Milosevic was being held, made it clear that he was under special observation. The tribunal's chief prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, did not rule out the possibility of suicide, however, saying that the tribunal's main defendant could thus challenge the tribunal a last time.

Relatives and supporters of Milosevic are accusing The Hague in his death. “All responsibility for Slobodan's death lies with The Hague Tribunal,” his bother Borislav said. Milosevic's widow Mira Markovic went even further, telling CNN that “the tribunal killed my husband.” The Socialist Party of Serbia, which Milosevic was honorary chairman of, made similar statements.

That theme was taken up by many present and former Russian politicians. The thought behind their statements was that Milosevic was not being tried in The Hague but taking revenge for his fight to preserve Yugoslavia, the unity of the Serbian people and that he was a great friend of Russia. Those are all myths, however. In reality, Milosevic practically dug the grave for Yugoslavia and caused his own people, the Serbs, much of the suffering in loss that it experiences a decade a go. Russia was simply used by him, as he tried to cause conflict between it and the West for his own benefit.

The Milosevic Formula

Milosevic lived by a formula of gaining and retaining power at any price. A biographer of the former Yugoslav president from the 1980s onward wrote, “I cannot imagine him an average citizen walking down the street.”

Milosevic came to power through a putsch. In 1987, as first secretary of the Serbian communists, he called an extraordinary plenary meeting of the central committee that dismissed head of the republic Ivan Stambolic. Stambolic was not simply Milosevic's patron, he had made him the second-ranking person in Serbia from a simple banking bureaucrat. Thus Milosevic thanked his benefactor in 1987. Thirteen years later, when Stambolic intended to return to politics a the head of the opposition, Milosevic ordered his extermination, as the participants in his kidnapping and murder themselves recounted recently.

In 1991, when Milosevic was hanging onto power by a hair and the opposition was demonstrating in Belgrade and had begun a civil-disobedience campaign, Milosevic started a war with Croatia, calling on his countrymen to unite in the face of a common external enemy. Having been incited to fight for their independence, Croatian Serbs created Srpska Kraina, an independent state within the territory of Croatia. International intermediaries, including Russia, proposed that it have a special status as a state within a state. That proposal was ideal for Serbian national interests, but Milosevic nonetheless rejected it. Two years later, the Croatian Serbs lost everything and were made refugees.

In 1995, Milosevic also betrayed the Bosnian Serbs when he signed the Dayton Accord, which was a painful blow to them. The Bosnian Serbs had been offered several settlement plans before that that were much more beneficial to them than the Dayton Accord. But the Bosnian Serbs rejected them all at the instruction of Milosevic. But Milosevic received the status of guarantor from the Dayton Accord. If the West wanted to maintain peace in Bosnia, it had to agree to keep Milosevic in power.

The war in Kosovo and the NATO strikes in Yugoslavia could have been avoided as well. If Milosevic had signed the Rambouille Peace Agreement in 1999, Kosovo would have remained part of Serbia with broad political autonomy. But Milosevic consciously provoked the NATO bombings to crush the opposition under the cover of wartime conditions and increase his power at the expense of Kosovo.

Milosevic and Russia

Milosevic always applied the same formula to Russia. He refused its help any time there was the slightest chance of reaching an agreement with the West independently.

Two days after the beginning of the bombing of Yugoslavia, Russian foreign minister at the time Irog Ivanov told members of the State Duma the sensational news that “When Russia prevented the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1998 by convincing Belgrade to agree to the presence of an OSCE mission in Kosovo, Milosevic signed two separate agreements with NATO. One was on the maximum number of Serbian troops in Kosovo and the other on fly-over rights for NATO aviation on the territory of Kosovo. Russia had no relation to with those agreements. But it is their violation by Belgrade that NATO is using to justify its bombing of Yugoslavia.”

In June 1999, when Viktor Chernomyrdin, acting as the emissary of the Russian president, convinced Milosevic to accept the peace plan and stop the bombardment, a source close to Chernomyrdin told Kommersant that “if it hadn't been for Chernomyrdin, Milosevic most likely would have made a separate peace with NATO.” According to some sources, at the height of the military operation, Milosevic contacted then U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright a propsed a deal: Belgrade would capitulate to the United States if Washington would agree to keep Milosevic in power. But the deal never came off and the Balkan leader soon fell.

The recent trip to Moscow for treatment that never took place was also used by Milosevic's inner circle to try to drive a wedge between Russia and the West. That attempt was unsuccessful.

The attitude of the majority of Serbs to their former leader was expressed by one citizen on the website of the independent radio station B-92 in Belgrade: “How terrible that he died unconvicted.” The Hague Tribunal is in fact responsible for being unable to proof his guilt and conclude the trial in four years. But now not the tribunal, but life itself has sentenced Slobodan Milosevic.
by Oleg Zorin

All the Article in Russian as of Mar. 13, 2006

March 13, 2006 at 01:08 PM in Europe | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

French response level to terrorist attack spelled out

Radio New Zealand - French response level to terrorist attack spelled out

French president Jacques Chirac says France would be ready to use nuclear weapons against any state that carried out a terrorist attack against it.

During a visit to a nuclear submarine base in northwestern France, the President said there was no change in France's overall policy, which rules out the use of nuclear weapons in a military conflict.

But he said the leaders of states who would use terrorist means against France, as well as those who would consider using weapons of mass destruction; would lay themselves open to a firm response on France's part.

Mr Chirac said that reponse could be conventional - or of a different kind.

It was the first time the French President had so clearly linked the threat of a nuclear response to a terrorist attack.

January 19, 2006 at 06:21 PM in Europe | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

A colonial paradise lost to violence in not-so-happy valley

World news from The Times and the Sunday Times - Times Online

By Devika Bhat
Ill-feeling between foreign investors and the local population contributes to the atmosphere of fear
THE murder of Joan Root is the latest in a spate of killings directed at white settlers, which have shocked Kenya.

The country’s colonial history is well documented, most notoriously in James Fox’s novel about the White Mischief set of Happy Valley, who are depicted as revelling in their decadent and self-gratifying lifestyle with little apparent regard for the local people.

As recounted in the book, Lord Errol, who lived in Kenya during the Second World War, was shot dead in 1941 by a mystery assailant.

The jealous husband of a woman with whom he was alleged to have had an affair with was accused of his murder, but was later cleared. One theory speculates that Lord Erroll was involved in covert operations during the war and was regarded by the Government as a loose cannon who had to be silenced.

A later scandal focused on the 1988 killing of the British photographer Julie Ward, who, like Ms Root, was passionate about the wildlife she had come to capture on film.

Six days after Ms Ward was reported missing, the remains of her leg and jaw were found in the Masai Mara game reserve. Kenyan police initially refused to conduct a murder inquiry, saying that she had been killed by wild animals despite evidence that the body had been dismembered with a sharp object.

Determined to pursue the truth, Ms Ward’s father, John, began his own investigation. In 2004 this lead to Ipswich coroners court ruling that his daughter was unlawfully killed.

The Lake Naivasha region, which is part of the Great Rift Valley of eastern Africa, is known for its sprawling flower farms and opulent Tudor-style mansions. Once famed for its seemingly idyllic setting, it is not difficult to see why the first white settlers considered the spot a sort of heaven on earth.

But in recent times Naivasha has been disturbed by ill feeling between foreign investors and the local population, mainly over access to pasture and to the lake’s shore.

At least three other Europeans have been killed during violent robberies in the Rift Valley since September 2004, prompting great unease and convern over security.

In July 2005 a prominent British hotelier in his 60s was shot dead near Naivasha by armed robbers as he went to the rescue of a guard who raised the alarm. John Goldson, who owned the Crater Lake Lodge, was murdered along with two others only months after a Dutch horticulturalist was killed as he arrived home with workers’ salaries. In September 2004 John Alma, a British farmer, was murdered at his house.

The heightened tension and concern over security has also claimed other casualties. Thomas Cholmondeley, a prominent British aristocrat and the son of the 5th Baron Delamere, shot and killed an undercover game warden on his Rift Valley ranch but evaded a murder trial, saying that he had acted in self-defence.

Locals say that the problem of rampant crime against whites and blacks shows no sign of disappearing, with a poorly equipped police force appearing powerless to stop it.

Last year, a farmer’s organisation pleaded with the Government to improve roads and to curb crime, complaining that the security risks were scaring away investors.

To add to the region’s woes, the fish harvests, once plentiful and prosperous, declined last year to no more than a feeble trickle.

As one local resident said: “This is not a happy valley — it is a valley of fear . . . We live in fear for our lives.”

January 14, 2006 at 10:55 AM in Europe | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Spain defies US over arms sales

World news from The Times and the Sunday Times - Times Online

By Tim Reid
A row erupted between the US and Spain yesterday after Washington tried to block Madrid from selling military aircraft to the left-wing Government of President Chávez of Venezuela. Spain reacted with defiance, saying that the $2 billion (£1.2 billion) deal for military aircraft, which contain US technology, would go ahead.

The dispute will further sour relations already damaged by the decision of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the Prime Minister, to pull Spanish troops out of Iraq as soon as he took power in April 2004.

President Chávez, an ally of Fidel Castro, the Cuban leader, has begun a military spending spree that concerns Washington and has courted Tehran in recent months.

The row threatened to overshadow a visit to Washington by Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, which had been seen as a first step to mending German-US relations after German opposition to the Iraq war.

January 14, 2006 at 10:42 AM in Europe | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

A new age is dawning in Berlin

A new age is dawning in Berlin - Print Version - International Herald Tribune

By Richard Bernstein The New York Times
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2005

BERLIN Fully two months after one of the strangest and most inconclusive elections in Germany's modern history, Parliament seems set on Tuesday to elect Angela Merkel, chairman of the conservative Christian Democratic Party, as the first woman chancellor.

Merkel will immediately take power, name a cabinet and, after weeks of intense negotiations over a program to pursue, actually start governing in what is called a grand coalition with her chief rivals, the Social Democratic Party of the outgoing chancellor, Gerhard Schröder.

But there is more than the fact that Merkel is a woman or even that she will be the first chancellor from the former East Germany that is promising to make Tuesday a moment to remember in this country's history.

In what now seems a swift and, in many respects, unexpected change, Merkel's arrival in power signals a shift to a new political generation here, one that did not go through the usual rites of passage to power in Germany.

By an almost eerie coincidence, the Social Democrats last week elected a new leader, Matthias Platzeck, who is also an Easterner, leading to much comment that, after holding them in something close to contempt for the first decade after reunification, the Western power brokers of this country have turned to Easterners to guide them out of deep economic crisis.

The similarities between Merkel and Platzeck are remarkable.

They are not only both Easterners, but also the same age, 51, or 10 years younger than Schröder. Like Merkel, Platzeck was trained as a scientist and again like Merkel, he became involved in politics only as the East German government was falling.

That Merkel and Platzeck both emerged to leading roles just now probably does not constitute a broad trend. Yet, analysts believe, they do represent some of the qualities of the generation that is taking over in German politics.

That generation is being viewed by commentators and analysts as a potentially more pragmatic, less ideological group than those who have governed Germany for the past half century or so.

Perhaps most significantly of all, the new leaders are one step further removed from the earlier leadership's preoccupation with German history and the limitations that this history placed on their freedom of action.

Gone, in other words, is the generation, represented by such former chancellors as Helmut Schmidt and Helmut Kohl, that brought West Germany safely through the Cold War and into the era of reunification. Gone too are the more recent politicians, like Schröder and Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, who received their political formation during the 1960s student protests and who have dominated German politics for the last seven years.

What takes their place is not entirely sure, in part because they are outsiders and thus have less of a track record than is normal at that level of German politics.

Indeed, it is far from certain that the coalition government Merkel will bring into power will last long enough to make much of an impact.

But what is certain is that, at a moment that everybody deems a critical one for this country, the top leaders of both parties are different from what came before.

"It's an important symbol that the Easterners have come to power," said Uwe Andersen, a political science professor at Ruhr University in Bochum. "They have a more pragmatic way of doing things and they are used to big changes in life and therefore, I think, they are not so reluctant to face up to new challenges."

Another specialist on German politics, Claus Leggewie of Giessen University, predicts that the new leaders, in partial rebellion against the generation that came before, will be more conservative, more focused on business and on concrete problems and less interested in the moral preoccupations of the recent German past.

"The irony of the political generation of '68 is that they created a kind of normal Germany," he said. "Their approach was one of guilt, of never again this kind of dictatorship. They had an alarmist approach to German history and society."

Despite that, he said, Germany under their rule has become more like other countries, able to pursue its self-interest more or less unapologetically.

"Whatever direction we go in will not be justified by history any more," Leggewie said. "It's no longer about history, but about the concrete problems that we have. This has really changed."

Merkel comes to power in a situation as fraught as any facing a new government, with Germany's economy having stagnated for five years, unemployment at post-World War II highs and, perhaps most important, no consensus across the nation about what to do about it.

Over the weeks, as the price she had to pay for coming to power, Merkel not only had to give the rival party half the seats in the cabinet, but also had to jettison, at least for now, many of the elements of the platform on which she campaigned.

In exchange for agreement from the Social Democrats to retain a 3 percent increase in sales taxes, a central part of her original program, Merkel accepted an income tax increase that will be imposed on the wealthy and saw her proposals to reform the labor market and health insurance system put on indefinite hold.

The deal to create a coalition has been criticized by many in Germany as a sort of lowest common denominator program inadequate to the task of reviving the economy. But the compromises that the two sides made also seem to reflect the deep uncertainty in the electorate about how much to give up in the country's elaborate social welfare system for the sake of economic competitiveness.

Will the coalition last its full four-year term? Many believe that it will, if only because the electorate will punish any party to the coalition that stops cooperating and forces unwanted new elections, which might be as inconclusive as the election in September.

But others believe that the parties and their constituencies are too different to be able to avoid serious conflict in the near future, especially if there is no progress in Germany's most immediate task, which is to bring down the 11 percent rate of unemployment.

November 21, 2005 at 06:04 PM in Europe | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

In France, An Islamist Opportunity?

TCS: Tech Central Station - In France, An Islamist Opportunity?

By Olivier Guitta Published 11/11/2005

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TCS

After two weeks of intense rioting throughout France, many observers are pointing fingers at Muslim fundamentalists. Some even allege that French Islamists, who find support in the country's poor Arab ghettoes, are organizing the riots. This theory is far-fetched.
But that doesn't mean the Islamists don't stand to profit from the ongoing violence.

When French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin was asked on Monday about Islamist participation, he downplayed the issue. More significantly, the Renseignements Generaux -- a police unit that closely monitors the Islamists, mosques, militant banlieues and terror suspects -- confirmed that no Islamist influence could be observed.

In fact, the French suburbs where radical Islam is most entrenched have been quiet. As terrorism expert Alain Bauer wisely observed: "The radical Islamists would rather see the return of calm so they can act quietly."

Most radical Islamist Web sites I've browsed are calling on rioters to put down their rocks and molotov cocktails. One exhorts Muslims "not to give ammunition to the Zionist Nicolas Sarkozy scum who has now shown his real face as an Israeli terrorist" -- a reference to the country's hardline Interior Minister.

Obviously, Islamists are not calling for calm out of sheer kindness. Their true motive is that they wish to become indispensable actors on the national political stage. They want to be viewed as an intermediary between the French state and the young Muslims of the banlieues or, ideally, all Muslims.

This is the same strategy that has long been embraced by the Union des Organisations Islamiques de France (UOIF), an offshoot of the extremist Muslim Brotherhood, and the second largest Muslim organization in France. Like other Islamist groups, the UOIF has been hard at work in France's Arab suburbs since the mid-1990's, radicalizing young Muslims and spreading the message that Islamic values are incompatible with a secular, multicultural society.

One of UOIF's mottos is "Islam is the solution." And by even unofficially accepting its help during the current crisis, the French government is giving some credibility to that conceit.

This fits in with the Muslim Brotherhood's global plan. According to Sylvain Besson, a Swiss investigative reporter and author of "La conquete de L'Occident: Le projet secret des Islamistes" (The conquest of the West: The secret project of the Islamists), Swiss authorities found a fascinating document when they entered a villa belonging to Yusuf Nada, one of al-Qaeda's alleged financiers, in November 2001. Entitled "The Project," the 14-page leaflet calls for the Brotherhood's conquest of Western nations through the birth of a parallel Muslim society and parallel Muslim public institutions.

France, with its rigid adherence to secular Republicanism, has always dismissed such a threat. But thanks to immigration, the country is now at least 10% Muslim. Recent events suggest the Muslim Brotherhood's blueprint is not as other-wordly as it once seemed.

But there are divisions in the Islamists' ranks. On Sunday, UOIF issued a fatwa calling on Muslims to stop the violence. In response, the largest "mainstream" Islamist Web site, oumma.com, which had been UOIF's conduit until recently, called the fatwa "delirious," and even accused UOIF of being a traitor organization that has sold its soul to the devil Sarkozy. The rift centers on tactics: Some Islamists see the violence as a useful means to extract concessions, and want it to continue. Nonetheless, both sides share the same ambition -- to turn France into Europe's first Islamic republic.

The hundreds of rioters being thrown into French jails may also play into the Islamists' hands. Prison has always been a prime recruiting ground for radical European Muslims. Expect many of the new inmates to return to French headlines as jihadis. However the violence ends, Islamists will be the true winner.

Olivier Guitta is a consultant on foreign affairs.

November 20, 2005 at 03:45 AM in Europe | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

The Case for EFTA

The Bruges Group

About the Author
Daniel Hannan was elected a Conservative MEP for South East England in 1999, and re-elected in top position in 2004. He is a leader writer on The Daily Telegraph and a columnist on The Sunday Telegraph and the German newspaper Die Welt. He sits on the European Parliament’s Constitutional Affairs Committee, and was the first person in Britain to call for a referendum on the EU constitution. His publications include A Treaty Too Far, The Challenge of the East, The Euro: Bad for Business, A Guide to the Amsterdam Treaty and What if Britain votes No? He speaks French and Spanish, and has been a member of the Bruges Group since 1991.

“Of course, Britain could survive outside the EU... We could probably get access to the single market as Norway and Switzerland do...”

November 16, 2005 at 10:02 PM in Europe | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Timeline: French riots

BBC NEWS | Europe | Timeline: French riots

25 October: Visiting the Paris suburb of Argenteuil to see how new measures against urban violence are working, Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy is pelted with stones and bottles. He says that crime-ridden neighbourhoods should be "cleaned with a power hose" and describes violent elements as "gangrene" and "rabble".

27 October: Teenagers Zyed Benna and Bouna Traore are electrocuted after climbing into an electrical sub-station in the Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois, in what locals say was an attempt to hide from police. The police deny this, but news of their deaths triggers riots in the area which is home to large African and Arab communities. Arsonists destroy 15 vehicles.
Deaths that set Clichy ablaze

29 October: As unrest creeps across the Seine-Saint-Denis administrative region, a silent march to remember Zyed and Bouna is held in Clichy-sous-Bois by mourners in T-shirts reading "dead for nothing".

30 October: Mr Sarkozy pledges "zero tolerance" of rioting and sends police reinforcements to Clichy-sous-Bois. A junior minister in charge of equal opportunities, Azouz Begag, condemns the use of the word "rabble". A tear gas grenade, like those used by riot police, explodes at a Clichy-sous-Bois mosque, provoking further anger.
Paris riots prompt extra security

1 November: Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin pledges a full investigation into the deaths of Zyed and Bouna at a meeting with their families. Rioting spreads out of Seine-Saint-Denis to three other regions in the Paris area.

2 November: Rioters ransack a police station at Aulnay-sous-Bois, police report coming under fire from at least two live bullets at La Courneuve, and 177 vehicles are burnt.

3 November: Violence spreads beyond the Paris region to the eastern city of Dijon and parts of the south and west, with 400 vehicles burnt.
Riots spread beyond Paris

6 November: President Jacques Chirac promises to restore order after a meeting with his government. There follows the most violent night of rioting to date with nearly 1,500 vehicles burnt and nearly 400 arrests, many of them far beyond the Paris area. Two policemen are seriously injured in clashes in town of Grigny, near Paris.
Chirac pledges to defeat rioters
Violence hits fresh peak

7 November: Jean-Jacques Le Chenadec, 61, dies of injuries he received in an assault on Friday in the town of Stains, Seine-Saint-Denis. French media suggest he is the first fatality of the riots.

8 November: The cabinet authorises a range of emergency powers to tackle the unrest, under which local authorities can impose curfews and restrict people's movements. It is the first time the 1955 law has been implemented on mainland France. The move follows a night during which 1,173 cars are burnt and 330 arrests made, with 12 police officers injured.
New powers to tackle riots

9 November: Emergency powers come into force from midnight across more than 30 French towns and cities, including the Paris suburbs. The northern city of Amiens is the first to impose a curfew. Police say the level of violence is dropping, although incidents remain widespread across France.

November 13, 2005 at 09:32 AM in Europe | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Curfew fails to stop French riot

BBC NEWS | Europe | Curfew fails to stop French riot

Police in the French city of Lyon have used teargas to disperse youths throwing stones and attacking cars, the first rioting in a major city centre.

The unrest, which followed more than two weeks of violence in France's poor suburbs, occurred hours before a curfew for minors came into force in Lyon.

In Paris, a ban on public meetings has ended, with no reports of unrest.

Police overnight said the situation across France was "much calmer" than on previous nights.

More than 370 cars were burned overnight, down from 502 the previous night. A further 212 people were arrested.

In the southern town of Carpentras, a nursery school was torched and a burning car was pushed up to an old people's home, causing panic among residents.

There were disturbances in the cities of Toulouse and St-Etienne, and two riot police were injured.

Shops closed

The trouble began at about 1700 (1600 GMT) on Saturday on Place Bellecour, where a large number of riot police were on duty as a preventative measure.

About 50 youths attacked market stalls and damaged vehicles, witnesses told Reuters news agency. Two people were arrested.

Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy blamed the Lyon violence on a "demonstration by anarchists", but did not elaborate.

Officials in Lyon and 10 towns to the east of the city earlier announced a curfew to bar unaccompanied minors from the streets over the weekend between 2200 (2100 GMT) and 0600 (0500 GMT).

Paris curbs

The government last week declared a state of emergency in Paris and more than 30 other areas to help quell the unrest, which has lasted 17 consecutive nights.

The Paris ban on meetings "likely to start or fuel disorder", imposed under new emergency measures, was announced after police reports of e-mails and text messages calling for "violent acts" in the city.

CURFEW LAW
Provides for state of emergency, regional curfews, house searches, house arrest
Public meeting places can be closed down and media, film and theatre showings may be controlled
Breach of curfew could mean two-month jail sentence

Police take the strain
Send us your views

Meeting with Paris police on Saturday night, Mr Sarkozy repeated a pledge to throw out foreign nationals caught rioting.

"If you want to live in France with a residency permit, you have to abide by the laws... Immigration laws allow expulsions. I am the interior minister and I will apply the law," he said.

There was no sign of trouble, and peaceful demonstrations were allowed to go ahead with several hundred people rallying close to police headquarters in central Paris to protest against alleged discrimination against youths of immigrant origin.

The country's unrest was triggered by the deaths in the run-down Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois of two youths, who were accidentally electrocuted at an electricity sub-station.

Locals said they were fleeing police but the police deny this.

November 13, 2005 at 09:28 AM in Europe | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Paris police outlaw public meetings in bid to stop riots

Scotsman.com News - International - Paris police outlaw public meetings in bid to stop riots

ANDREW PICKEN

POLICE have banned all public meetings in Paris likely to provoke further riots following fears of a resurgence in violence in the French capital.

Parisian police say the ban was decided after calls for "violent acts" in Paris were intercepted from e-mail and text messages.

The move - imposed under new emergency measures - came into force this morning and is expected to last until tomorrow evening.

France's worst unrest in decades is dying down, but clashes between rioters and police persisted last night as more than 380 cars were set on fire, resulting in 162 people being arrested and detained across the country.

Authorities said that messages had surfaced urging the continuation of violence in the capital over the weekend, and, as a precaution, they had bolstered security in Paris.

Truckloads of riot police were deployed yesterday as President Jacques Chirac rode in an open jeep down the Champs-Elysees to lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier to mark Armistice Day, commemorating the end of World War I.

More than 700 police were brought into the capital to bolster security, raising the full deployment to 2220.

Paris police headquarters later banned any gatherings of "a nature that could provoke or encourage disorder".

A police spokesman said: "Messages distributed in the last few days over the internet and by text messaging have called for gatherings on November 12 in Paris and 'violent actions'."

A police officer suffered second degree burns after a firebomb was thrown into his vehicle, spraying him with flaming petrol, in the northern town of Saint-Quentin, national police spokesman Patrick Reydy said.

Elsewhere, vandals shut down a power substation last night, plunging parts of the northern city of Amiens into darkness for more than an hour.

Four individuals were arrested in Toulouse early today for possessing more than 19 gallons of fuel, Mr Reydy said.

And an unidentified attacker threw two firebombs into a mosque in the southern town of Carpentras during yesterday's Friday prayers, causing minor damage.

It was not immediately clear if the mosque attack was linked to the rioting.

There have been renewed calls for peace throughout France and several hundred people gathered at the glassy Wall of Peace near the Eiffel Tower yesterday to plead for an end to the unrest. The demonstration drew elderly Parisians and youths from the suburbs, along with curious onlookers, all engaging in heated debate over how to stem the violence and tackle the causes.

Authorities have acknowledged that the roots of the problem are deep-seated.

The key issues include soaring unemployment, poverty and discrimination in the working-class suburbs that ring the large cities of France.

"The violence of the last 15 days expresses the frustration of 30 years of denying recognition to the populations living in these neighbourhoods," said Hassan Ben M'Barek, a spokesman for Suburbs Respect, a group of associations that organised Friday's demonstration.

He asked President Jacques Chirac and the government to listen carefully to the youths, whose roots are in former French colonies of Africa, including Muslim North Africa, to better fight the "discrimination they suffer daily".

November 12, 2005 at 09:43 AM in Europe | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Restive France Declares State of Emergency

Guardian Unlimited | World Latest | Restive France Declares State of Emergency

Tuesday November 8, 2005 11:01 PM

AP Photo BOB101

By JOHN LEICESTER

Associated Press Writer

PARIS (AP) - The French government declared a state of emergency Tuesday after nearly two weeks of rioting, and the prime minister said the nation faced a ``moment of truth.''

The extraordinary security measures, to begin Wednesday and valid for 12 days, clear the way for curfews to try to halt the country's worst civil unrest since the student uprisings of 1968.

Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, tacitly acknowledging that France has failed to live up to its egalitarian ideals, reached out to the heavily immigrant suburbs where the rioting began. He said France must make a priority of working against the discrimination that feeds the frustration of youths made to feel that they do not belong in France.

``The effectiveness of our integration model is in question,'' the prime minister told parliament. He called the riots ``a warning'' and ``an appeal.''

Despite his conciliatory tone, Villepin said riot police faced ``determined individuals, structured gangs, organized criminality,'' and that restoring order ``will take time.'' Rioters have been using mobile phone text messages and the Internet to organize arson attacks, said police, who arrested two teenage bloggers accused of inciting other youths to riot.

``We must be lucid: The Republic is at a moment of truth,'' Villepin said.

Lawmakers at the impassioned parliamentary debate also spoke frankly about France's failings. But criticism of the government extended well beyond the country's borders.

Images of French teenagers from north and west African immigrant families pelting riot police with stones and gasoline bombs - reminiscent of Palestinian youths attacking Israeli patrols - have struck chords in the Muslim world.

The Egyptian daily Al-Massaie referred to the riots as ``the intefadeh of the poor.'' Arabic satellite networks have given lead coverage to the mayhem, with regular live reports. Newspapers have followed the story on inside pages, calling it a ``nightmare'' and a ``war of the suburbs.''

Arson attacks, rioting and other unrest have spread from the suburbs to hundreds of cities and towns - though acts of violence were down somewhat Monday night from the previous evening.

In the first reports of violence Tuesday night, a clash broke out between youths who threw gasoline bombs and police who retaliated with tear gas, LCI television said.

The 50-year-old state-of-emergency law that President Jacques Chirac invoked was originally drawn up to quell unrest in Algeria during its war of independence from France and was last used in December 1984 by the Socialist government of President Francois Mitterrand against rioting in the French Pacific Ocean territory of New Caledonia.

That Chirac took such steps was a measure both of the gravity of the crisis and of his sorely tested government's determination to restore control.

``France is wounded. It does not recognize itself in these devastated streets and neighborhoods, in this outburst of hatred and of violence that vandalizes and kills,'' Villepin said. ``The return to order is the absolute priority.''

Under the emergency laws, police - with 8,000 officers deployed and 1,500 reservists called up as reinforcements - could be empowered in areas where curfews are imposed to put troublemakers under house arrest, ban or limit the movement of people and vehicles, confiscate weapons and close public spaces where gangs gather, Villepin said.

The Interior Ministry said local officials were deciding whether curfew measures were needed in their areas. The Justice Ministry said curfew violators could face up to two months imprisonment and a $4,400 fine. Minors face one month imprisonment.

The northern French city of Amiens and the central city of Orleans said they planned curfews for minors under age 16, who must be accompanied by adults at night. Amiens also planned to forbid the sale of gasoline in cans to minors.

The widespread violence has already led France to begin fast-track trials, with 106 adults and 33 minors so far sentenced to prison or detention centers.

The violence started Oct. 27 as a localized riot in a northeast Paris suburb angry over the accidental electrocutions of two teenagers, of Mauritanian and Tunisian descent, while hiding from police in a power substation.

It has grown into a nationwide insurrection by disillusioned suburban youths, many of them French-born children of immigrants from France's former territories like Algeria. France's suburbs have long been neglected and their youth complain of a lack of jobs and widespread discrimination.

In his speech to parliament, Villepin said jobseekers with foreign-sounding names do not get equal consideration as those with traditional French-sounding names when presenting resumes.

The French system, said Jean-Christophe Lagarde, a lawmaker from Seine-Saint-Denis suburb of northeast Paris where the unrest started, is ``running out of steam.''

The main opposition Socialists, through their parliamentary leader Jean-Marc Ayrault, said they did not oppose the use of curfews but also warned that they should not be used to hide suburban ``misery'' or become ``a new mark of segregation.''

Communist Party leader Marie-George Buffet warned that the decree could enflame rioters. ``It could be taken anew as a sort of challenge to carry out more violence,'' she said.

French historians say the rioting is more widespread and destructive in material terms than the May riots of 1968, when university students erected barricades in Paris' Latin Quarter and across France, throwing paving stones at police. That unrest, a turning point in modern France, led to a general strike by 10 million workers and forced President Gen. Charles De Gaulle to dissolve parliament and fire Premier Georges Pompidou.

---

Associated Press Writers Christine Ollvier, Jamey Keaten and Angela Doland contributed to this report.

November 8, 2005 at 09:32 PM in Europe | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Unrest spreads from Paris to the provinces

Unrest spreads from Paris to the provinces | Economist.com

Nov 7th 2005
From The Economist Global Agenda
Rioting that began almost two weeks ago in run-down suburbs of Paris intensified and spread to other French cities at the weekend. The unrest, led by the disaffected children of immigrants, could be the biggest challenge to the government's authority since the student riots of the 1960s

WHEN riots erupt in one of the biggest countries of the supposedly super-stable European Union (EU), it can be embarrassing for the government concerned. When those riots go on night after night for the best part of two weeks, only to continue getting worse, it starts to become truly alarming. On Sunday November 6th, the eleventh night in a row of unrest in France, the violence intensified and spread to new areas, despite promises from the country’s president and prime minister to stamp it out. What started with a few disaffected, mostly Muslim youths throwing rocks and burning cars on the outskirts of Paris is fast turning into a national crisis.

The trouble began on October 27th, when two North African teenagers were electrocuted in the shabby Parisian suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois, apparently while fleeing the police. There followed a week of night-time riots in areas with large African and Arab communities in and around the capital. At the weekend, the government’s worst fears came true when the violence spread to other towns and cities. Of the 1,408 vehicles burnt on Sunday night, 982 were attacked outside the Paris region as the “shock wave” reached the rest of the country, in the words of Michel Gaudin, head of the national police.

Some 395 people were arrested on Sunday, bringing the total number to over 800. The most serious incident took place in Grigny, south of Paris, where a mob on a housing estate ambushed police with stones, petrol bombs and even guns. Ten officers were injured, two seriously. Trouble was also reported in the provincial cities of Marseille, Lens, Saint-Etienne, Toulouse, Metz, Nice, Cannes, Strasbourg and Lille. In Strasbourg, home of the European Parliament, rioters threw petrol bombs into a primary school. In Toulouse, a blazing car was pushed into the entrance of a metro station and police had to use tear gas to disperse a mob wielding clubs.

The French government has seemed at times to be at a loss over how to react to the violence, which is arguably the most serious challenge to its authority since the student riots that rocked Paris in 1968. Ministers held emergency talks last week to discuss “sensitive urban zones”, but these did little to reassure the public or stop the trouble. Meanwhile, President Jacques Chirac was widely criticised for remaining silent. On Sunday, he finally called a meeting of top security officials and addressed the public. “The republic is completely determined to be stronger than those who want to sow violence or fear,” he said. “The last word must be from the law.” But while Mr Chirac promised arrest and punishment for rioters, he added that “respect for all, justice and equal opportunity” were needed to end the violence. Jean-Marc Ayrault, leader of the opposition Socialist Party in parliament, wrote in Le Figaro, a daily, that “the least we can say is that the government’s response has been confused and weak.”

Many of those involved in the rioting blame the interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, for exacerbating tensions. Mr Sarkozy favours a zero-tolerance approach to urban violence, and in the days before the unrest began he angered many by calling troublemakers in poor districts “dregs”. But he has stood firm, and he remains popular: an opinion poll published in Le Parisien at the weekend gave him a nationwide approval rating of 57%. The current crisis has done nothing, so far, to dent his ambitions to succeed Mr Chirac as president.

The prime minister, Dominique de Villepin, who also has his eye on the presidency, has taken a more diplomatic approach, consulting with the leaders of immigrant communities and promising an “action plan” to address the anger of those in rundown neighbourhoods. He may release details of the plan on Monday evening, when he is expected to address the nation on television. A police organisation has called on the government to impose a curfew in riot-hit areas and send in the army to help restore order. Some 2,300 extra police officers have already been deployed.

France is home to Europe’s biggest Muslim population—some 5m strong—and most of the youths confronting the police are French-born Muslims of Arab or African origin (though the children of Portuguese immigrants and native French are also reported to have taken part). In an effort to stop the violence and show it to be un-Islamic, one of France’s largest Muslim organisations has issued a fatwa, or religious order, forbidding “any action that blindly hits private or public property or could constitute an attack on someone’s life.”

With national unemployment of 10% and a poor Muslim population largely confined to grim suburban housing estates, where joblessness can be twice the national average or more, the ingredients for social explosion have long been brewing. Many feel trapped on the estates, which were built in the 1960s and 1970s to house waves of immigrant workers. The government, they say, has promised equality but failed to deliver. The hard-line policing methods espoused by Mr Sarkozy have added to their sense of grievance.

French policies on religion may also play a part. The government has roundly rejected multiculturalism—the idea that different cultural communities should be allowed to follow their own way of life. As a result, there are no programmes to promote ethnic minorities out of their ghettos. The state keeps officialdom and religion firmly apart, and Mr Chirac has banned Muslim headscarves (as well as “conspicuous” crucifixes) in state schools. Many Muslims have come to feel stigmatised since the terrorist attacks of September 11th 2001, as France, along with other European countries, has cracked down on suspected Islamic extremists. Their sense of self-worth has hardly been boosted by growing French unease over allowing Muslim countries like Turkey into the EU.

November 7, 2005 at 03:12 PM in Europe | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

'The bitter fruit of government policy'

Telegraph | News | 'The bitter fruit of government policy'

By Jack Lang
(Filed: 06/11/2005)

Some people have been comparing these riots to those of 1968, but they are phenomena from two very different eras. I am not surprised by the explosion of violence in these suburbs - I have been warning it would happen.

The interior minister, Nicholas Sarkozy, wants to play the hardman with his use of insulting language to describe the young people in the banlieus - while for three and a half years, Jacques Chirac's government has broken its social, human and cultural links with the people of these areas.

Teaching posts have been dispensed with, as have local beat police officers. Public funding for schools and cultural, sporting and social associations has also been cut. All this has helped to turn these areas into ghettos. It is an explosive cocktail. On one hand, repression and provocation, on the other a loss of services and the consequent loss of human dignity and hope. The violence we are seeing is the bitter fruit of government policy. I don't say the Left is perfect but we did make efforts, however inadequate, to improve things.

Of course, the problems of the banlieus go back far further. Once built to house middle managers and the upwardly mobile, they have slowly degenerated. But the government is paying the price for having played on crime to win votes. It is an unhappy symptom of political and moral crisis.

Today France is like two countries: one rich and one poor. This is not acceptable when we talk of the values of liberté, egalité and fraternité.

The first immigrants arriving in France accepted inequalities, because they were not born here and because things were often better than where they came from.

The second and third generation immigrants have been born in France and have signed up to the principles of the Republic. They can see they are not treated equally, which is shocking. They don't accept the discrimination.

The people in these banlieus feel like second-class citizens, and until now the attitude of politicians, Left and Right, has been to throw them a few crumbs.

It won't be easy to calm things down. It will be difficult to rebuild the trust of people in these areas unless we offer them something concrete to improve their lives. There need to be fewer good words and more action.
# Jack Lang, the socialist French MP and former minister of culture, was talking to Kim Willsher

November 6, 2005 at 01:56 AM in Europe | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

A country in flames… French cities teeter on the edge of anarchy

Telegraph | News | A country in flames& French cities teeter on the edge of anarchy

By Kim Willsher in Clichy-sous-Bois, Paris
(Filed: 06/11/2005)

In pictures: Paris burns after week of rioting

Gangs of youths were once again on the rampage across France last night as the guerilla warfare, which has engulfed a string of Paris suburbs for more than a week, took hold in cities throughout the country.

Rioters played cat-and-mouse with the police, swooping to set fire to buses, public buildings, shops, factories and in one case a crèche before disappearing, leaving a trail of destruction.

Yesterday, after a ninth consecutive night in which rioters boasted they had made parts of France "like Baghdad", more than 750 cars had been set ablaze, the highest tally on a single night so far.

Police arrested 203 people including a 10-year-old boy, who was caught clutching a bottle of petrol.

Over the past 10 days riots, arson attacks and violent clashes have spread from the notorious banlieues of Paris - the grim housing estates that are home to many of the country's large North African immigrant community - to the rest of the country.

Yesterday officials reported incidents erupting from Rennes in the west, to Toulouse in the south and Strasbourg in the east.

Despite a string of emergency meetings and the drafting of 1,500 members of the CRS riot squads into the Paris suburbs, police and politicians have failed to control the worst violence the city has experienced since the riots of May 1968.

In the early hours of yesterday, gangs of youths threw blazing rubbish bins across the streets and set fire to cars, many of which belonged to their own neighbours.

The acrid smell of burning rubber and refuse filled the air and plumes of flames shot skywards, their orange glow illuminating the grim high-rise blocks, which have become France's 21st century ghettos.
A burnt-out vehicle Aulnay-sous-Bois, north-east of Paris
A burnt van in Aulnay-sous-Bois, north-east of Paris

Above one desolate street on the outskirts of Paris, a helicopter clattered but firefighters were forced to watch helplessly as a car burnt itself out. Any attempt to approach it resulted in a terrifying hail of stones, Molotov cocktails and other missiles.

Elsewhere in France, fire officers were pelted with metal petanque balls, car batteries and even cooking pots.

The commander of Paris's 14th Fire Brigade, Captain Sébastian Lamoureux, said his force had adopted tactics learnt from its counterpart in Northern Ireland and launched their rarely used "Urban Trouble" plan.

Fire engines had been ordered not to leave their station without a support vehicle and a police escort, he said.

"We don't get involved unless there's a danger of the fire spreading. Otherwise we leave the vehicle or the rubbish bin to burn itself out."

The renewed violence erupted hours after Dominique de Villepin, the French prime minister, repeated calls for calm and summoned young representatives from the Paris suburbs to his office for talks.

"I think he appreciated meeting us and learnt something. It was a good initiative for him to take," said Anyss Arbib, one of the representatives.

"There needs to be better relations and communications between the police and the people in the banlieues."
Residents pass a burned car in Aulnay-sous-Bois
Residents pass a burned car in Aulnay-sous-Bois

The first violence was triggered after a routine police patrol in the district of Chêne-Pointu in Clichy-sous-Bois, north-east Paris. The districts of Clichy are typical of the outer-Paris sink estates, which are home to many second and third generation immigrant families. The French Fifth Republic expects them to bury their own customs in the name of integration and consequently they have discovered there is more liberté, egalité and fraternité for some than others.

Across France some 751 neighbourhoods, housing around five million people, are classified as severely disadvantaged. In Clichy, less than 10 miles from the chic Champs Elysées, half the 28,000 population is under 25 and unemployment is more than double the national average of 10 per cent.

The incident which triggered France's most violent convulsion for almost 40 years began on the evening of October 27, as police officers approached a group of youths, most of North African descent, returning from a football match. Some of them panicked and ran.

"We all do it. You don't hang around and wait to be pushed around or arrested for nothing," said one Clichy teenager.

Terrified that the police were chasing them, which the officers have denied, three fled towards an electricity sub-station. Ignoring the danger signs, they scrambled over 10ft walls topped with three rows of barbed wire. Minutes later two of them, aged 15 and 17, were electrocuted and died. Miraculously the third survived, but was seriously burnt. As word of the tragedy spread, the anger and frustration never far below the surface of the banlieues erupted. Angry youngsters have pledged to keep fighting so their friends did not "die for nothing".

Many of them also blame the tough-talking interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, for making matters worse. He has described the rioters as "scum" and threatened to "hose down" the estates to get rid of them.

"He's disrespected us, which is a declaration of war," one young man told the Sunday Telegraph as he surveyed one of Clichy's housing estates that was dotted with piles of ash and broken glass. "Those guys, our friends, died for nothing and we're being dissed. Someone has to say sorry."

Since then politicians, social commentators and journalists have been picking over France's failure to integrate its burgeoning immigrant population.

"The Republic is not keeping its promise of liberty, equality and fraternity," thundered the respected sociologist, Michel Wieviorka, in the Libération newspaper. "Cultural identities are not sufficiently recognised and there is no longer any mediation between the inhabitants of these areas and the politicians. It's a total crisis."

Yet while the violence has dominated French media all week, most citizens are otherwise unaffected by the tumult - an indication of just how detached from mainstream French life those living on the troubled housing estates have become.

This weekend, even residents sympathetic to the rioters called for a halt to violence. One 30-year-old Moroccan, whose car had been torched by local youths, said: "Obviously I'm angry with the youths who are burning the cars of people living in their own area."

Yet many agree that Mr Sarkozy is partly to blame. The interior minister was unrepentant, however. "This minority of hooligans and assassins must not be confused with the immense majority of youngsters in the banlieues," he said. "I refuse to let these organised gangs make the law. The Republican state will not give in."

November 6, 2005 at 01:54 AM in Europe | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Headscarf defeat riles French Muslims

BBC NEWS | World | Europe | Headscarf defeat riles French Muslims

Rioting in a Paris suburb has highlighted discontent among French youths of foreign origin, many of whom define themselves through Islam.

As part of a series on French Muslims, the BBC News website's Henri Astier reports on the impact of the headscarf ban.

Every morning headteacher Genevieve Piniau stands guard at the gate of the Lycee Robert Doisneau in Corbeil-Essonne near Paris.

She is there to ensure no rules are broken, including a ban on Muslim headscarves and other "conspicuous" religious symbols in French state schools. Dozens of girls duly take off their hijabs as they approach the gate.

But when one student tries to sneak past Ms Piniau with hers still on, the headteacher immediately spots her: "Off with it!"

Despite this rare incident, Ms Piniau says the ban is now widely accepted.

The collective baring of heads at the school gate testifies to that. However the acceptance is often grudging.

Asma Boubker, 16, says she feels targeted as a Muslim: "Christians have crucifixes, why can't we have headscarves?"

But other Muslim girls support the ban. "Some teachers would not see beyond the scarf and judge us - it's best if we have to take it off," says Siham, 15.

Rama Kourouma, 18, agrees that religion should not be advertised in schools. "Faith is in the heart," she smiles.

Popular

The compliant students of Lycee Robert Doisneau are no exception.

"All conspicuous religious signs have gone," says Marie-Louise Testenoire, the top education official for the Essonne department - which includes Corbeil-Essonne and other areas with large Muslim communities.

Amira Zitouni
It is a war of religion. Islam is targeted through the headscarf
Amira Zitouni, student

French Muslims speak out
This development is remarkable given the controversy that surrounded the introduction of the ban last year.

French Muslims marched against a move that many condemned as intolerant.

Many pointed out that the bill reversed court decisions that had allowed students to wear religious signs, as long as they did not amount to "proselytising".

The first blow to the anti-ban campaign came in August last year - ironically at the hand of militants who abducted two French reporters in Iraq, demanding the law should be withdrawn.

Protests died down, as French Muslims refused to be associated with the hostage-takers.

But the key to the ban's success has been its enduring popularity. All political parties endorsed it.

And a recent Pew think-tank survey indicated that secularist France was the country where restrictions on religion symbols had the strongest support - a full 75% backed the school ban.

Soft approach

At Robert Doisneau, Ms Piniau says that during the last academic year she secured co-operation through discussion, rather than discipline.

FRENCH ISLAM
Evry mosque
Second largest religion
Five million Muslims (estimate)
35% Algerian origin (estimate)
25% Moroccan origin (estimate)
10% Tunisian origin (estimate)
Concentrated in poor suburbs of Paris, Lille, Lyon, Marseille and other cities
Even at the height of the controversy in early 2004, when 30 girls defiantly came to school with headscarves, she never expelled anyone.

"I took them into my office and explained to them what secularism meant," Ms Piniau recalls.

"I said I had the deepest respect for their faith, but I did not want to know what their religion was - any more than I wanted them to know what mine was."

The message was accepted by all but one of the girls - most of whom, according to Ms Piniau, had been pressured by relatives.

The clearest sign that the 2004 law is now accepted is that no Muslim group is fighting for its repeal - not even the Organisation of Islamic Organisations of France (UOIF), which is closest to grass-roots opinion in the country's poorer suburbs.

"The law is unfair to Muslims, but we've put it behind us," said Rachid Hamoudi, the UOIF director of a big mosque in Lille, northern France.

The building also houses one of France's Muslim schools, the Lycee Averroes, which Mr Hamoudi offers as "an alternative for those who want to wear a veil".

Lingering tensions

But the wide acceptance of the ban does not mean the scarf issue has been settled once and for all.

Veiled student at Creteil university
The Muslim hijab can be worn in French universities
It remains contentious, not so much for the French Muslim community as a whole - which includes many secularists - but for youngsters with North African roots who have found a sense of identity through religion.

To get an idea of the lingering tensions, it is worth looking at what happens to these young Muslims beyond secondary school.

At university level, the law on religious signs does not apply.

Nevertheless Teycir ben Naser, a second-year student at Creteil University near Paris, has opted for a discreet bandana.

The 19-year-old feels the headscarf she wears off campus could become a liability during oral exams.

Not that it would influence examiners, she says, but "they might say things or look at me in a certain way, and that would undermine my confidence".

Veiled ambition

The main challenge, however, will come after university.

"We are studying to be able to work later," Ms ben Naser says. "And we all we know that if you wear a veil all the doors will close."

She says her mother, who has a PhD in philosophy and wears a headscarf, does not have a job as a result.

Sonia Benyahia, a student who wears a headscarf on campus and wants to be a schoolteacher, fears her future could be equally blocked.

"I don't know if I'll be able to take off the scarf, so I think I'll remain a housewife," she says.

Ambitious Muslim women will no doubt enter the French workforce in the coming years.

But many will have to choose between their careers and wearing their religion proudly.

November 2, 2005 at 05:08 PM in Europe | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

French Muslims face job discrimination

BBC NEWS | World | Europe | French Muslims face job discrimination

Days of rioting in the bleaker suburbs of Paris have highlighted discontent among many French youths of North African origin.

As part of a series on French Muslims, the BBC News website's Henri Astier looks at the issue of discrimination, a leading source of frustration in France's unemployment-riddled ghettos.

Sadek recently quit his job delivering groceries near Saint-Denis, just north of Paris. He was tired of climbing stairs with heavy bags.

Sadek, 31, has a secondary school education and aspires to something better. But he knows his options are limited: "With a name like mine, I can't have a sales job."

Telemarketing could be a possibility - his Arab roots safely hidden from view. Of course, he would have to work under an assumed name.

Sadek's story sums up the job prospects of the children and grandchildren of Muslim immigrants.

They may be French on paper - but they know that Ali and Rachid are much less likely to get ahead than Alain or Richard.

Racial discrimination is banned in France. But a quick look at the people working in any shop or office suggests the practice is widespread.

The impression is confirmed by official statistics.

Unemployment among people of French origin is 9.2%. Among those of foreign origin, the figure is 14% - even after adjusting for educational qualifications.

Closed doors

The pressure group SOS Racisme regularly highlights cases of employers discarding applicants with foreign names.

It says such discrimination is particularly rife in the retail and hospitality industries - but also for jobs involving no contact with the public.

"Some companies believe that to be responsible for marketing you must have roots in mainland France over several generations to understand the French consumer attitudes," according to a recent SOS Racisme report.

"Doors are closed when you are an Arab," says Yazid Sabeg, a businessman and writer.

For many young people, the first time they notice the closed door is when they try to go clubbing.

"The first time the guy at the entrance says: 'You're not coming in', you accept it," says Nadir Dendoune, a journalist from Saint-Denis.

"But after two or three times, you go home carrying a bag of hatred on your shoulders."

And when you can't find a job, Mr Dendoune adds, despondency turns to paranoia.

"Every rejection - even those that may not be racially motivated - undermines your self-confidence. You feel you will never make it because you are Arab."

Failed approach

France has countless bodies dedicated to helping immigrants - a High Council for Integration, a Directorate for Populations and Migrations, several regional commissions for the insertion of immigrants, and so on.

Despite this, France's integration policy has failed, the Court of Accounts, a government watchdog, concluded last year.

The situation could lead to "serious social and racial tensions", the court warned prophetically.

According to some, the concept of "integration" itself is flawed.

"People always talk of the need to 'integrate' Muslims. But the youths are French. Why should they need integrating?" asks Samia Amara, 23, a youth worker near Paris.

Mr Sabeg agrees that "integration" is just hot air. "What does it mean? Are some French people supposed to integrate and others to be integrated?"

Some politicians argue that France should admit this failure and try something new.

Manuel Valls, an MP and mayor of Evry, a town south of Paris where half the population have foreign roots, says France "cannot lecture Britain or the US" on immigration issues.

His country, he points out, has no black or Arab TV presenters, and all MPs from mainland France are white.

Mr Valls is a firm believer in "positive discrimination" - a very un-French concept that is beginning to gain acceptance.

The broad idea is extra help based on geographical and social - but not racial - criteria. Mr Valls points to an example of such action in his own constituency.

The Lycee Robert Doisneau is a secondary school surrounded by some of the country's worst housing estates, with unemployment in excess of 30%.

About 70% of pupils have foreign parents or grandparents.

Despite such a challenging intake, the school offers a way out of the ghetto.

"The students come here to study and to succeed," says head teacher Genevieve Piniau.

She has pioneered partnerships with elite schools, whose high-fliers groom local pupils to develop their aspirations.

The school also takes part in a scheme run by Paris' Political Sciences Institute, providing special access for students from deprived areas.

The result is 89% success in school leaving exams - well above the national average - and a record of success at university level for former students.

Distant dream

Of course, youths from poor suburbs need more than an education - they need jobs.

Efforts are being made to encourage employers to take them on. Unlike the failed legislative approach, the emphasis is now on voluntary pledges by employers.

Mr Sabeg is among the sponsors of a new "diversity charter" encouraging companies to "reflect the diversity of French society" by hiring qualified non-whites.

It remains to be seen how this will be implemented.

Mr Sabeg is looking across the Channel for inspiration, noting that the head of Vodafone, one of Europe's largest companies, is an Indian, Arun Sarin.

"When this happens here, we will know France has changed," he says.

Meanwhile in Saint-Denis, Sadek would settle for a temp job at the post office - but that remains a distant dream.

November 2, 2005 at 05:06 PM in Europe | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Dutch terrorist group arrests

World news from The Times and the Sunday Times - Times Online

Dutch terrorist group arrests

The Hague: The Dutch authorities arrested six men and a woman on suspicion of belonging to the terrorist Hofstad group. Johan Remkes, the Interior Minister, said they were an acute threat to several politicians and the intelligence services. They will appear in court in Rotterdam on Monday. Thirteen other people are in custody awaiting trial charged with belonging to the Islamist group. (AFP)

October 16, 2005 at 11:45 AM in Europe | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Nation which began as joke mourns its leader and greatest ambassador

The Scotsman - Top Stories - Nation which began as joke mourns its leader and greatest ambassador

SUSAN BELL
IN PARIS

IT WAS created as a joke and is not shown on any map, yet since it was founded in 1947 the Free Republic of Saugeais has boasted a president, a prime minister, customs officers and a national anthem.

Now the tiny, little-known independent state in eastern France has been thrust into the limelight following the death of its beloved president, Gabrielle Pourchet, who died last week aged 99.

Named after the upper valley of the River Doubs, a region near the Swiss border known since the 12th century as the Saugeais Valley, the 1,000-square-kilometre Republic of Saugeais lists 4,500 citizens and includes 11 municipalities.

Mme Pourchet had governed Saugeais for more than 30 years and was credited with having introduced the minuscule state to a wider public. Under her presidency a banknote was released in 1997 and the French postal service celebrated the republic with a stamp in 1987.

On Saturday, hundreds of Saugets flocked to the republic's capital of Montbenoit to pay their last respects to their president at her funeral in the 12th-century abbey.

During the ceremony the Saugeais national anthem was sung in local dialect by the fire brigade from Gilley, a village described by Saugets as the republic's economic capital.

"Thanks to her we had lots of television coverage," said Louis Perrey, the republic's general secretary. "She was someone with great media presence who had an exemplary lack of affectation. She was an extraordinary woman."

Farmer Jean-Marie Nicod, who is prime minister, said: "She had an exceptional aura."

It will fall to him to serve as an interim president until the question of the succession is solved. In the meantime, he declined to comment on what the future holds for the Republic. "Let us bury our dead first," he said.

Gabrielle Pourchet arrived in Montbenoit, aged 25, with her husband, Georges, to manage the hotel attached to the abbey.

According to popular legend, it was Georges Pourchet's light-hearted teasing which caused the Republic of Saugeais to be founded 58 years ago during a visit to Montbenoit by the prefect - the senior government official for the Doubs region.

While the prefect was eating lunch in the Hôtel de l'Abbaye, Mr Pourchet jokingly asked him: "Do you have a pass allowing you to enter the Republic of Saugeais?"

The prefect asked for more details on the republic, and eventually answered: "A republic must have a president. You are hereby appointed president of the Free Republic of Saugeais."

Mr Pourchet died in 1968, and for four years Saugeais had no president. Mrs Pourchet retired in 1970 and spent two years helping the parish priest restore the abbey.

She was elected president of Saugeais for life in 1972 by her fellow citizens during a lunch given to raise funds for the abbey preservation.

Under her rule, visitors to Saugeais were required to pass through customs, and needed an official laissez-passer to enter the republic. This pass was decorated with a ribbon in the Saugeais colours and seal delivered by the president.

The republic also has its own black, red and yellow flag embellished with the Saugeais coat of arms, a government with a prime minister, 12 ambassadors and two customs officers who sport black caps adorned with the letters RS in gold.

French authorities have traditionally treated the breakaway republic with tolerance and amusement. Mrs Pourchet was even made a Knight of the Legion of Honour in 1977 - one of the highest French honours.

However, diplomatic relations with France cooled in 2001 when the tiny state adopted its own constitution.

The presidential succession will be decided next month.

September 5, 2005 at 12:59 AM in Europe | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Left or Right? Germany set for debate

The Scotsman - Top Stories - Left or Right? Germany set for debate

ALLAN HALL
IN BERLIN

GERHARD Schröder, the German chancellor, was last night set to go head-to-head in a live television debate with Angela Merkel, the opposition leader widely expected to unseat him in the country's general election in two weeks time.

Latest polls suggest Ms Merkel has an almost unassailable 12-percentage point lead over Mr Schröder and his red-green coalition that has presided over economic stagnation, higher taxes, accelerating unemployment and a general malaise that has turned the locomotive of Europe into its broken engine.

Mr Schröder was forced to call an early election when in May his left-of-centre Social Democrat party lost control of North Rhine-Westphalia, a state that had been ruled by his party for nearly 40 years.

It was lost in a landslide to Ms Merkel's conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), because of the lacklustre economy and stinging cutbacks that Mr Schröder embarked upon to save the welfare state itself.

Ms Merkel offers no magic wand to cure Germany's ills, but last night she was expected to spell out some Thatcherite policies that she hopes will connect with a hurting population.

The 51-year-old, from the former communist east, will have little room for error in her only head-to-head clash with Mr Schröder, which is expected to be watched by more than 15 million households.

Any slip-ups could swing support to Mr Schröder's party, denying her a parliamentary majority with the liberal Free Democrats (FDP) and forcing her CDU into a "grand coalition" with the Social Democrats - with huge implications for German economic policy.

"A majority for the Union [CDU] and FDP is by no means guaranteed," Manfred Guellner, of the pollsters Forsa, told the Bild am Sonntag newspaper.

"This TV debate is unlikely to have as much impact as in 2002, when personality issues were more important. But it could increase the likelihood of a grand coalition."

Although coalitions between the Christian Democrats and Social Democrats exist at the state level, an alliance between the traditional rivals has occurred only once nationally, between 1966 and 1969.

Financial markets fear such an alliance would lead to gridlock, hindering reforms that economists say are crucial to boost German growth and cut unemployment, currently near post-war highs. A coalition of the two biggest parties could also give a bigger voice to smaller fringe parties.

Ms Merkel has promised profound changes on the economic front, while Mr Schröder plays to the fear of change.

Radical change in this country came previously on the heels of two world wars, and the population is used to embracing the familiar over the unknown.

But Ms Merkel can afford to offer the long view if the poll numbers stay with her.

She is poised to become the first woman chancellor in Germany's history, sitting in the seat first occupied by Bismark.

"Schröder will smile more and shine more. Merkel will present arguments," said Guido Westerwelle, of the FDP. "People must decide which is more important."

September 5, 2005 at 12:56 AM in Europe | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

The View From Abroad

The View From Abroad - New York Times

By RICHARD BERNSTEIN
Published: September 4, 2005

Berlin

THEY were perhaps a bit slow, but the expressions of sympathy and offers of aid in the wake of Hurricane Katrina did materialize in Europe through the week.

Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of Germany declared, "'Our American friends should know that we are standing by them." The French prime minister, Dominique de Villepin, offered to send supplies, two airplanes, 35 members of civil security rescue teams, and other equipment and personnel.

Still, Europe's response so far to the calamity of Katrina has been complicated, even ambivalent. There was plenty of sympathy and willingness to help, but there was also, as with Mr. de Villepin's offer, a rather formulaic quality and an absence of any powerful, spontaneous surge of empathy and affection for the afflicted nation.

Why?

It is hard to measure this, but judging from the commentary and the blogs, the collective European response to the victims of the tsunami or the famine in Niger, to the killings in Darfur or the deaths of Shiite pilgrims in Baghdad seems to have been more immediate and deeply felt than for the victims of Katrina. And one reason for this relative coolness may be that these other disasters took place in poor, troubled nations, not in the most powerful and richest country on earth.

In fact, the spectacle of the hurricane causing a disaster of third-world proportions in the United States seems to have provoked a sort of dismay among Europeans, mingling with the sorrow. As a reporter on BBC Television argued on Friday, not able to keep the anger from his voice, the looting, the armed gangs, the gunplay and, especially, the arrogance, in his view, that the mostly white police displayed toward mostly black residents represented "the dark underbelly of life in this country." There was something shameful, he said, about the way a natural disaster has produced behavior that, for example, the tsunami didn't produce in the third-world countries it hit. And it is painful to be a witness to somebody else's shame.

"Why should hundreds die, mostly African-Americans, in a predicted disaster in the richest nation on earth" was one expression of a widespread feeling in Europe, this one appearing Friday in a letter in the British newspaper The Guardian.

There were many comments to the effect that earlier predictions of the disaster did not lead public officials to make sure the levees would withstand any possible onslaught, and there was the unspoken opinion that such would not have been the case, say, with the dikes of the Netherlands, or in any of the rich European countries.

"These are incredible scenes from the richest and the biggest country in the world," Jean-Pierre Pernaud, the anchorman on one of the main midday French news programs, said on Friday. A program on the competing channel ran an interview with a specialist on the United States, Nicole Bacharan, who said, "These images reveal to the world the reality in the Southern states: the poverty of 37 million Americans."

A few environmentalists in Europe seized on the situation to express one of their greatest irritations: the unwillingness of the Bush administration to sign the Kyoto Protocol on global warming. Jürgen Trittin, minister of the environment in Germany, was the most prominent among these, though others in Europe echoed this sentiment.

"The American president has closed his eyes to the economic and human damage that natural catastrophes such as Katrina - in other words, disasters caused by a lack of climate protection measures - can visit on his country," Mr. Trittin said.

But Mr. Trittin's comment, which made headlines in Germany, provoked as much outrage as approval. "Instead of standing by the Americans as they try to come to grips with the hurricane catastrophe, our environment minister Trittin shows the world the face of the ugly German," the mass circulation Bild Zeitung wrote Friday. A British commentator, Gerard Baker, called comments like those of Mr. Trittin and a few others examples of "intellectual looting." It was, he said, "the predictable exploitation of tragedy for political purposes."

Still, Mr. Baker also went on to make the point that the real problem was the inherent inequality of suffering. "The tragedy has been visited disproportionately, indeed almost exclusively, on the city's African-Americans," he wrote.

There is no doubt most Europeans feel sorrow over the scenes of devastation they see on television, and many will no doubt contribute to funds set up to help the victims. At the same time, however, the particular circumstances of New Orleans and Biloxi, Miss., have tended to confirm the worst image of America that prevails in Europe, the vision of a country of staggering inequalities, indifference to the general welfare (especially during the Bush administration), and lacking in what Europeans call "solidarity."

As that BBC reporter put it, there were no scenes of armed gangs of looters in gun battles with the police in Sri Lanka after the tsunami.

That things have gone so badly so quickly after the storm in New Orleans has produced, beyond sympathy, feelings in Europe of disappointment, distress and even fear that a major city in the world's superpower could have fallen into something that looks, from this side of the Atlantic, like anarchy.

September 4, 2005 at 08:01 PM in Europe | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Denmark Tries to Act Against Terrorism as Mood in Europe Shifts

Denmark Tries to Act Against Terrorism as Mood in Europe Shifts

Law Raises Concerns of Civil Libertarians

By Kevin Sullivan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, August 29, 2005; Page A09

COPENHAGEN -- Said Mansour, a slightly built man with a bushy beard, believes Muslims have a right to kill Americans in Iraq because, he said, "This is war; it's not a picnic."

So, he explained in an interview last week, he had no qualms about downloading and burning CDs of Internet videos depicting beheadings in Iraq and speeches by Abu Musab Zarqawi, the terrorist mastermind behind much of the Iraqi insurgency.

Now, Danish police intend to make Mansour, 45, a Moroccan-born Danish citizen, the first person ever charged under an anti-terrorism law enacted in 2002 that forbids instigation of terrorism or offering advice to terrorists. Police sources said Mansour would probably be charged for distributing CDs that contained the inflammatory jihadist speeches and gruesome images.

The law contains curbs on free speech that are remarkable in a country famous for tolerating all points of view. It illustrates how democracies across Europe are adopting tougher measures in an era of rising extremist violence, despite protests that civil liberties are being sacrificed in the process.

The 2004 Madrid train bombings, which killed 191 people, and the London bombings last month, which killed 56 people, including the four bombers, have added new urgency to the issue.

"We have to look at reality," said Rikke Hvilshoj, Denmark's minister of refugee, immigration and integration affairs, noting that some have abused Denmark's free speech guarantees to encourage violence and killing. "The day we don't have freedom of speech, the fundamentalists have won," she said. "On the other hand, we can't be naive."

Experts said the debate about how to balance anti-terrorism protections with individual freedoms is at the top of the agenda for European nations. The issue is particularly acute in Denmark, Italy and Poland -- which have troops in Iraq as part of the U.S.-led military coalition and fear they could be the next target -- and in Spain, following the train attacks there.

"The mood has shifted in Europe more toward security than it was before the London bombings," said Daniel Keohane, senior research fellow at the Center for European Reform in London. "The Europeans have always been very nervous about infringing on civil liberties. But when you experience terrorism, it changes your views."

France, with Europe's largest Muslim community -- 6 million people -- has just announced plans to strengthen its anti-terror laws, already among Europe's strongest. Britain now plans to ban or deport those who incite terrorism, close bookshops or places of worship used by radical groups and criminalize speech that "foments, justifies or glorifies" terrorism.

Human rights groups and Muslim civic leaders called those measures too broad.

"What may be seen as a glorification of terrorism by one person might be seen as an explanation of the causes of terrorism by another person," said Azzam Tamimi, a senior leader of the Muslim Association of Britain.

Some political activists here said their government was trampling free speech guarantees contained in the Danish constitution.

"They have crossed the line," said Naser Khader, 42, a Syrian-born member of Parliament who has been a vocal critic of Muslim extremists. "The society must be open and free. If you close it and make a lot of restrictions, the terrorists get what they want."

But a recent survey found that 80 percent of Danes supported the new laws to battle terrorism and control immigration. In Britain, 73 percent of people polled by the Guardian newspaper in mid-August said that they were willing to give up some civil liberties to improve security.

Said Mansour, 45, a Moroccan-born Danish citizen, could become the first person charged under a new law that forbids instigation of terrorism or offering advice to terrorists.
Said Mansour, 45, a Moroccan-born Danish citizen, could become the first person charged under a new law that forbids instigation of terrorism or offering advice to terrorists. (By Kevin Sullivan -- The Washington Post)

"The terror is getting closer," said Morten Messerschmidt, a member of Parliament from the strongly anti-immigration Danish People's Party. "First it was D.C. and New York, then Madrid and now London. Who's next? There's no doubt we are in a potential threat situation, and that scares people."

Messerschmidt said curbing free speech was "very tough and emotional to do in England or Denmark or any other country that respects freedom, but it's out of necessity." He said a terror attack in Denmark was inevitable. "You'd have to live in a fantasy world to think it won't happen here."

Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen ordered a review of national laws governing security and civil liberties immediately after the London bombings. "We must not have a police state and a surveillance society," he said in a recent radio broadcast. "But we must not be overindulgent either."

Many European countries have long had laws banning racist hate speech, an outgrowth of their experiences with Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. But analysts said Denmark's new speech law, part of a package of anti-terror laws enacted in the aftermath of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, was at the forefront of tougher European laws. The law banning instigation of terrorism carries a penalty of up to six years in prison.

Denmark's anti-terror laws also ban financing of radical groups and give police new powers to electronically eavesdrop on suspected radicals. Danish intelligence officers have also increased what Hans Jorgen Bonnichsen, commander of the Danish Security Intelligence Service, called "preventive talks" with potential radicals.

In an interview, Bonnichsen said his officers conduct close surveillance of suspected radicals and occasionally let them know they are being watched in order to disrupt their activities. He said intelligence officers work closely with Danish universities to monitor foreign-born students and watch for suspicious activity.

"Three years ago, people thought it was terrifying what Denmark was doing," said Hvilshoj, the immigration affairs minister. But with the shifting mood in Europe, she said, "that has changed. People are looking at Denmark differently."

In Denmark, as in much of Europe, fears of terrorism are often intertwined with concerns about immigration, particularly the immigration of Muslims. There are about 15 million Muslims living in the 25 countries of the European Union. Roughly 200,000 of Denmark's 5.4 million people are Muslim.

Rasmussen's right-leaning government was elected in November 2001, riding a wave of popular anger about rising immigration. Nearly overnight, the government reversed Denmark's generous immigration policies, tightening requirements for asylum-seekers and for foreign residents trying to bring in spouses.

Many Muslims in Demark see racist motives in the government's policies.

"The Danes have a fear of disappearing into the bigger European ocean," said Ahmed Abu Laban, one of Denmark's most prominent imams. "They have made immigrants pay the price. Muslims have become the scapegoat. They think we will undermine their culture and their values."

But police officials said racism had nothing to do with their plan to charge Mansour under the instigation law.

Mansour, who arrived for an interview in long Muslim robes and sandals, insisted on praying before speaking to a journalist.

He said he had come to Denmark in 1983 to join a sister who lived here. He married a Danish woman the next year; they now have four children who attend public schools. His wife is a public school teacher, but Mansour said he was unemployed and collected a monthly government welfare benefit of about $1,800.

Mansour described leading an active life in Danish Muslim circles, distributing audio recordings and videotapes of peaceful Islamic songs and stories. He denied being a violent radical, although he said he was "happy" about the Sept. 11 attacks and admitted he maintained relationships with well-known radicals from other countries.

He said he had been close friends with Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, the cleric who was convicted in connection with the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York. He said Abdel Rahman stayed at his house twice on visits to Denmark.

Mansour also said he was in contact with two men whom authorities have described as aiding or inspiring the Sept. 11 attacks. One was Abu Qatada, a radical Muslim cleric who was convicted in Jordan of several bomb attacks; tapes of his speeches were found in the German apartment used by several Sept. 11 attackers. The other was Imad Eddin Barakat Yarkas, a Syrian accused in Spain of giving money and support to the Sept. 11 attackers.

Mansour said he was aware that the police intend to bring charges against him. But he said that knowing people who had been convicted of crimes was not illegal and that passing out material downloaded from the Internet shouldn't be, either.

"Everybody can do it," he said, asserting that Danish officials are "just trying to show the Americans they are against terrorism. They don't have anybody, so they are using me."

August 29, 2005 at 10:02 PM in Europe | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

The extraordinary days that changed the face of Europe

World news from The Times and the Sunday Times - Times Online

By Roger Boyes
THE Solidarity revolution that erupted in August 1980 was a mixture of carnival high spirits, faith, fear and pluck. Never in the history of communism had the police state been so openly mocked and the leaders so rudely snubbed.

Then, 16 months later, the system struck back — and closed down the nation. It proved the death knell of communism. For a foreign correspondent, the imposition of martial law on December 13, 1981, was a throwback to the days of 19th-century journalism when articles were sent back to head office by pigeon or on horseback.

Telephone lines were cut. Telexes fell silent. Young soldiers clustered around braziers in the snow enforcing the night-time curfew. Men in uniforms drove the trams and read the television news, which was little more than a long catalogue of forbidden acts.

Our “pigeons” were travellers — contract teachers fleeing for Britain, charity workers, Westerners escaping before the frontiers were sealed.

We disguised our articles as letters, handwritten or typed, and addressed them, in my case, to Dear Uncle Harry (Sir Harold Evans, the Times Editor) or Cousin Ivan (Ivan Barnes, the foreign editor).

There was a line of fake family chitchat to mislead any inquisitive Customs officer, and the rest was news, analysis and reporting from a country that had suddenly been amputated from Europe. Some “pigeons” panicked and flushed the letters down train lavatories before they reached the East German border, lest they be strip-searched or arrested.

But many got through, collected in the West Berlin Zoo station, or at a Scandinavian quayside, or simply posted from Dover as newspapers waited to discover if Solidarity had really been crushed.

Once published, the smuggled articles were picked up by Western broadcasters, Radio Free Europe and the BBC Polish service, and transmitted back into Poland: it was the first chink in the armour.

The post-carnival hangover lasted for much of the decade. General Jaruzelski’s regime came to understand that communism — propped up by tanks — needed to find new sources of legitimacy and so, very cautiously, he tried to open up.

When a gang of secret policemen murdered Father Jerzy Popieluszko, the chain-smoking priest who was Solidarity’s champion, in 1984, they were tried publicly. Foreign correspondents were as shocked as the Poles by the killing. The shy but affable priest, now en route to sainthood, had been a guest at our party. And the trial showed both us — and the exhausted supporters of the Solidarity underground movement — that a power vacuum had opened up in Poland. Jaruzelski could no longer lead, but Solidarity was not yet in a position to take over power.

I remember seeing a politburo member visiting an electric light factory in Warsaw. He smiled — an innovation of the mid-1980s — and held out his hand to the assembled women workers. It was a Friday, they had just been paid and had manicured their nails for the weekend ahead.

No one responded. There was not a spark of goodwill, only icy contempt for their leader. The man’s hand fell to his side and panic flickered over his otherwise blurred features. It was the end of fear; the cement of communism was crumbling fast.

Soon enough the regime grasped that it had to share power with Solidarity and, amazingly, a consensus was reached among the rival Solidarity chieftains about what level of surrender could reasonably be demanded.

The deal struck in 1989 was reproduced in different forms across the disintegrating Soviet empire: communists bought immunity and access to personal wealth (taking up management positions in privatised companies) in return for surrendering their unchallenged right to run the country.

We correspondents, swept along by the 1989 revolution, should have looked more closely at the small print. The seed of much current unhappiness in Eastern Europe was sown in that year.

Solidarity unravelled and a somewhat ramshackle party system took its place. Lech Walesa became Poland’s President, then lost office and became briefly the star of a television programme about angling.

The peasant cunning and political intuition that had made him such a brilliant strike leader were not enough to sustain a career as a statesman.

His weakness, then as now, was that he was too easily bored. In one interview, I spotted — hidden behind heavy but obviously unopened volumes of statecraft — two collections of crossword puzzles. During our talk he had been trying to solve several puzzles simultaneously. Outside, courtiers were waiting for him to make yet another decision.

Next week Mr Walesa — the man who clambered over the Gdansk shipyard fence 25 years ago to lead a revolution — will formally resign his Solidarity membership. “It’s changed,” he said, “and so have I. And that’s a good thing.”

Roger Boyes is the author of The Naked President, a biography of Lech Walesa (Secker and Warburg)

August 26, 2005 at 06:29 PM in Europe | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

In Europe's midst

After the London bombs | In Europe's midst | Economist.com

Jul 14th 2005
From The Economist print edition

Four young British Muslims became zealots, and the zealots became suicide-bombers

HOW can one begin to fathom what is going through the head of a man who, in the name of God and without warning, sets out to kill as many of his fellow citizens as he can? Barely a week after British suicide-bombers tore the heart out of London's rush hour, taking dozens of innocent lives, it is hard to see anything more than sheer hatred. But Europe, which is home to some 20m of the world's Muslims, will have to look deeper into the jihadi mind than that. There is a clear threat of more terrorist attacks, and not only in Britain.

On the July 7th attacks themselves, a surprising amount is already known (see article). On July 12th British police announced their discovery that four young men carrying rucksacks packed with a specialised, military form of explosive had travelled to London. At least three of the friends seen smiling and laughing in closed-circuit television pictures at King's Cross station then blew themselves up on three Underground trains and a bus. Three of the men were from Pakistani families in northern England and the fourth was Jamaican-born, but all were British. One worked in his father's fish and chip shop. Police think the mastermind behind Britain's first-ever suicide-bomb remains at large, as do more potential bombers. If they are right, then the implication is that the London bombings were not just the act of isolated malcontents but a sign of the continued existence of a trans-national terror network.

The boy next door

Whether from such a network or from local groups, the threat of jihadism is being felt throughout Europe. In the Netherlands this week, Mohammed Bouyeri, a 27-year-old Dutchman of Moroccan descent, stood trial for the murder of Theo van Gogh, a film director whose work had attacked Islam's treatment of women. Mr Bouyeri was linked to the “Hofstad group”, some of whom were accused of wild plans to blow up Schiphol airport, the Dutch parliament and one of the country's nuclear reactors. In Italy, amid fears that the country faces attack, the government of Silvio Berlusconi plans to strengthen anti-terror laws (see article). In Spain, they are still mourning the victims of last year's Madrid bombs.

The protean threat of jihad in Europe poses a wider danger, too. Freer than they would be in the Middle East and North Africa, radicals can ship money and manpower from wealthy Europe to violent groups elsewhere. Would-be attackers bearing European passports—often “clean-skinned”, ie, unknown to western intelligence services—can more easily transport terror to the United States—as they did on September 11th 2001—than if they were known dissidents from Saudi Arabia or Syria. For everyone's sake, therefore, Europeans need to stiffen their campaign against indigenous jihad. And that means concentrating on three things: the jihadis, the law and—most controversially—Islam itself.

What could possibly explain the journey that led four young Muslims from childhood in Leeds to mass-murder in London? The fact that the chosen method was suicide feels especially shocking, but probably should not. It was already the method used on September 11th, and was then the intended technique of a Briton called Richard Reid who converted to Islam and sought to destroy a passenger plane with a bomb concealed in his shoe. In 2003 two educated young men quit Britain to become suicide-bombers in Tel Aviv. That a desire for martyrdom is added to the desire to kill may reveal the intensity of feeling, or just desperation to make the attack succeed. Much more important is the urge to kill in the first place.

For every one of these footsoldiers of terror, tens of thousands of similar young men choose to lead uneventful and peaceful lives. Amid Turks in Germany, Algerians in France and Pakistanis in Britain, it is vain to look for a simple cause that determines the conversion to jihad (literally, struggle). But there are subtle patterns and tendencies (see article). Many are the children or grandchildren of immigrants, some of whom grew up huddled in what Robert Leiken, of the Nixon Centre in Washington, DC, calls “internal colonies”—ghettos cut off from the culture of their new homeland. Most are under 30; some are well educated. Although they may be middle class, their community is probably not. Often they have grown apart from their family: some might have drifted into petty crime, or an unIslamic taste for alcohol and women. Something then leads them to religion and thence radical voices preaching the Utopia of worldwide Islamic rule.

It is hard to intercept the wild career from misfit to Mujahideen precisely because it is so unpredictable. Some people blame the war in Iraq, but that is to confuse the means of recruitment with its fundamental causes. Al-Qaeda was busy bombing its way across the world before American tanks rolled into Baghdad. Atrocities in Chechnya and Afghanistan were the rallying call back then—and without Fallujah, would still be today. Iraq is a threat chiefly because it is a magnet and a training ground for foreign fighters. Hints at the withdrawal of troops only add to its potency.

A better response is to tighten the law at home. In the Netherlands, where some members of the Hofstad group were initially acquitted for all crimes but then rearrested, that will shortly mean increasing the powers of arrest and admitting evidence from the intelligence agencies and anonymous sources. In Italy it ought to mean fixing the country's hopelessly fragmented system of prosecutors and law-enforcement agencies. Across Europe, investigators need powers to inhibit terror financing and to trace network