Iraqi interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi sought to calm European anger yesterday over his description of states that opposed the US-led war to oust former president Saddam Hussein as "spectators."
But several EU leaders said his comment, on a visit to Rome on Thursday, were unhelpful ahead of a first meeting at which the 25-nation bloc is due to offer him a modest aid package as it seeks a fresh start after bitter divisions over Iraq.
"What I said is that history is history, past is past. We need to start operations, to start a new chapter and look to the future. We definitely want to forge a positive alliance with Europe," Allawi told reporters after a breakfast meeting with British Prime Minister Tony Blair in Brussels.
Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker, one of the European critics of the war, told reporters: "I don't like the expression `spectator states' at all. I don't understand it, and if I do understand it right, I don't like it at all."
Meanwhile, Dutch Foreign Minister Bernard Bot, whose country holds the EU's rotating presidency, denied that French President Jacques Chirac was boycotting the lunch because of bad relations with Baghdad.
"That has other reasons," he said when asked about Chirac's planned early departure from an EU summit, missing the Allawi lunch to fly to the United Arab Emirates to express condolences for the death on Tuesday of its founding leader, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan.
France managed to get a phrase explicitly welcoming Allawi deleted from the draft summit statement, diplomats said.
Instead the text said: "The European Council met Iraqi Prime Minister Allawi to discuss the situation in Iraq and reiterated its strong support for the political process in Iraq and the Iraqi interim government."
"I think that what we should do is look towards the future, forget about the past," Bot told reporters on arrival for the second day of the EU summit.
"What is very important is that we give off a signal that we are interested in Iraq, that we are willing to help to [re]construct the country," he said, underlining a newly-agreed EU package of financial and other support.
"It is a very positive package. What is important now is that we start this dialogue and continue it on the highest possible level. I have full confidence that we will have a good meeting today," he added.
The EU aid package is relatively small, consisting of 16.5 million euros (US$21 million) in financing for elections due in January, support for developing the justice system and help for a UN protection force for the elections.
The EU support for Allawi was meant to heal deep rifts within the bloc over the Iraq war and signal a new start in cooperation with the US after President George W. Bush's re-election on Tuesday.
In a draft statement seen by reporters, the EU leaders signalled their will to improve relations with Washington.
"The EU ... looks forward to working very closely with President Bush and his new administration to combine efforts, including in multilateral institutions, to promote the rule of law and create a just, democratic and secure world," the draft statement said.
On Thursday, some EU leaders expressed hope that the second Bush administration would give a fresh start to transatlantic ties and allow for progress in Iraq and across the Middle East.
But Blair rubbed salt in some European leaders' wounds in an interview with The Times published yesterday, saying some people were "in a sort of state of denial" about Bush's victory.
Both Allawi and Blair expressed their determination that the elections in January would go ahead despite persistent violence.
"It's absolutely crucial for the security of our own country that that [elections] happens," Blair told reporters.
"These people that are trying to create circumstances of chaos and instability in Iraq are doing so because of their fear of the democratic process," he said.
In the longer term, the 25-nation EU envisages extending preferential trade terms and preparing a trade and cooperation agreement which would formalize commercial links for the first time once Iraq has a constitution in 2006.
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
UNDER INVESTIGATION: Members of the local Muslim community had raised concerns with the police about the boy, who officials said might have been radicalized online A 16-year-old boy armed with a knife was shot dead by police after he stabbed a man in the Australian west coast city of Perth, officials said yesterday. The incident occurred in the parking lot of a hardware store in suburban Willetton on Saturday night. The teen attacked the man and then rushed at police officers before he was shot, Western Australian Premier Roger Cook told reporters. “There are indications he had been radicalized online,” Cook told a news conference, adding that it appeared he acted alone. A man in his 30s was found at the scene with a stab wound to his back.