Tension with US shows EU maturing

"THIS is not a crisis but a problem to be managed. There will always be flashpoints in a relationship where trade is some $250 billion dollars each way every year and there is so much immigration."

Mr Stuart Eizenstat, the US Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade and President Clinton's special envoy on Cuba, was speaking in an interview in Dublin on the eve of this weekend's informal meeting of European Union foreign ministers in Tralee.

Many of the issues on their agenda concern US EU relations, from the Iraqi and Middle Eastern issues following on from this week's cruise missile attacks, through Cuba, Iran and Libya, where US extra territorial legislation governing trade and investment have made most EU governments livid, through Bosnia and relations with Russia, where there is much more consensus with the US.

In many ways the tension with the US is a clear sign that EU foreign policy is maturing beyond the traditional consultative mechanism towards something more substantive and focused.

It still falls well short of the classical unitary structure characteristic of the foreign policies of the individual member states; there is, indeed, little indication as yet that many of them are willing to pool sovereignty further and decisively in that direction by agreeing to more majority voting in the Inter Governmental Conference.

The ministers will hear a report tomorrow from Mr Noel Dorr, who has been co ordinating negotiations on Mr Spring's behalf over the summer months.

Mr Dorr will, nonetheless, be reporting solid progress in the field of security policy, where there is tentative agreement to incorporate the so called St Petersburg tasks of peacekeeping and humanitarian intervention into the treaties.

There is also consensus on providing greater research and analysis back up services in the secretariat of the Council of Ministers in Brussels. Mr Dorr and the Irish presidency have been the subject of positive comment in the German press, including the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Rheinischer Merkur and Die Zeit, for the surprising amount of ground covered so far in the IGC.

Mr Eizenstat is a close student of European integration, having served as US ambassador to the EU in Brussels and published extensively on the parallels between US and EU political development.

On trade policy in goods (but not yet on intellectual property and services) the EU member states have ceded sovereignty to the European Commission, and Mr Eizenstat is well aware of the damage an escalation of the row over Cuba could do to transatlantic relations.

He appealed to the EU not to refer the Helms Burton legislation to the World Trade Organisation and put forward an alternative plan to encourage the political transition to democracy in Cuba, to be pursued by co operative action among western states dealing with it.

This would allow President Clinton, if he is re elected, to suspend the penal clauses for another six months. Indeed, most of the foreign ministers attending this meeting assume that the pressure will ease up on this issue after the election; certainly this alternative plan is far softer, capable of being agreed and is a clear sign that the US administration wants to back off a confrontation. It could well provide a way out for the EU ministers as well.

It now looks as if President Clinton will visit Ireland once again for an EU-US summit in late November or early December.

These summits are twice yearly events, intended to raise the profile of the relationship and channel it institutionally.

Whatever about the Helms Burton legislation on Cuba, the use of similar extra territorial provisions in the D'Amato act to penalise companies investing over $40 million in Iranian and Libyan energy facilities will ensure that such economic tension remains on the agenda.

It has been vehemently rejected by the Italians, who rely on Libya for natural gas, and the French, who plan large scale oil investments in Iran, but also by the British and Germans, who favour a critical dialogue with Iran rather than the policy of containment and isolation favoured in Washington.

MR EIZENSTAT says the US has been trying for three years to get European governments to confront Iran's state terrorism. "Critical dialogue has not modified its behaviour. The failure to do so generates this kind of legislation in the US Congress," he says.

But European governments have been given more reason this week to reflect on the shortcomings of a politically and electorally driven US foreign policy. The most notable feature of Mr Clinton's decision to retaliate unilaterally with cruise missile attacks after Saddam Hussein's intervention in the Kurdish civil war was the failure to carry most European (and Middle Eastern) governments with him.

This is not just a matter of European caution and hesitation, but of more fundamental differences of perception and interest in dealing with Iran and Iraq and broader Middle East issues as well.

The fact that Britain and German support has offset criticism from France and other EU states this week is therefore of limited comfort to the Americans.

It is hard not to see such disagreements growing in future years. But it must be difficult and frustrating for the US to know how best to manage them.

Unlike on trade policy, when the Commission has a clear cut and powerful competence which matches the US one, on foreign policy competence is still concentrated in the most powerful member states. It is subject to a lack of resources and political disagreement which often inhibit decisive comment, let alone common action. This asymmetry between the EU and the US looks likely to endure.

One of the greatest challenges, facing the EU at this stage of its development is whether it can summon up the political will to" work more closely together on foreign policy matters where a common interest can be defined.

The need for good relations with the neighbouring Middle East is one of the prime candidates for closer co operation.

Mr Eizenstat points out that after much contentious disagreement over even closer neighbouring Bosnia, the Dayton accords were reached (under US tutelage) and implemented successfully. The next few months will see further US-EU negotiations on what should replace the Nato commanded force when the year long mandate runs out in December.

There will also be intense discussion on Nato enlargement and relations with Russia, as the US Secretary of State, Warren Christopher, underlined in his speech yesterday in Stuttgart. He said the present is as important a turning point in transatlantic relations as the immediate post war period.

Ireland is certainly not peripheral in transatlantic relations, whatever about its status in Europe (it is, perhaps, a sign of a certain political maturing here that we hear less talk now of our peripheral status - as Eleanor Roosevelt put it, "No one can call you inferior without your consent").

The Government will be anxious to put this fact at the disposal of the EU during the rest of the EU presidency. On all fronts, from the foreign policy matters discussed here, to the other issues for which the foreign ministers have responsibility as a general affairs council, it promises to be an extremely busy period.