EU/IRAQ: Media and officials in eastern and central Europe yesterday slammed French officials for saying that "childish" and "dangerous" countries that voice support for US policy on Iraq jeopardise their EU prospects and should "shut up".
Newspapers and officials in Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Bulgaria and Romania decried Monday's comments by French President Jacques Chirac and Defence Minister Michele Alliot-Marie at the end of an emergency EU summit on Iraq. "Chirac has spanked us," wrote Bulgaria's Trud.
"It seems that France, a nation with old traditions of teaching, decided to educate European youngsters," Lithuania's Verslo Zinios said.
"President Chirac has the insolence to reprimand us like little children because we have a different opinion," wrote Bulgaria's The Standard. "The representative of a nation so proud of its diplomatic aptitude has shown himself a boor with little diplomacy," wrote the Czech Republic's largest newspaper, Dnes.
On Monday, Mr Chirac said that EU candidate countries that had voiced support for the US position on Iraq were "not very well brought up and a bit unaware of the dangers" of voicing their opinion and "should have kept quiet". In late January, Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic co-signed a letter supporting the US position on Iraq with five western European leaders. Weeks later, 10 other central and eastern European countries issued a statement supporting the US stance.
Instead of heated rhetoric, Western European countries need to understand "the eastern Europeans' main viewpoint over the Iraqi issue: the need to put an end to dictatorship," said Hungary's Nepszabadsag yesterday.
"No country can be stigmatised or threatened because it thinks differently about the Euro-Atlantic partnership," Hungary's Foreign Minister Laszlo Kovacs said.
"We should ask whether France really wants to recreate lines of division in Europe and strip itself of potential allies in central and eastern Europe," wrote Estonia's Postimees daily.
"The vicious words and the threats will only remind east Europeans of their recent past," wrote Bulgaria's independent Dnevnik, referring to the Soviet domination of the region following the Second World War.
"The main difference between the Soviet Union and the European Union - Brussels does not send tanks into disobedient countries," wrote the Czech Lidove Noviny.