EUROPEAN DIARY: Sitting at a vast conference table in his curiously suburban prime ministerial headquarters, Mr José Maria Aznar was talking enthusiastically about Spain's priorities during its six-month EU Presidency. Denis Staunton reports.
The tiny, fastidiously groomed prime minister spoke emphatically about his wish to promote economic reform and to liberalise Europe's energy and transport sectors. And he expressed confidence that Spain would maintain the momentum of negotiations with candidate countries, despite Madrid's determination to hold on to its share of cohesion funds after enlargement.
But Mr Aznar became most animated when he discussed Europe's emerging security and defence identity, a project his government supports energetically. The prime minister expressed the hope that the EU will soon take complete command of the peace-keeping and policing mission in Macedonia and called for action against terrorism to be added to the list of tasks for which the EU's Rapid Reaction Force could be used.
Mr Aznar stressed that Europe's common security policy should only be applied to terrorist threats from organisations based outside the EU. But he suggested that EU governments should start pooling military intelligence, a step too far for many European intelligence chiefs.
Mr Aznar was speaking the day after President Bush identified Iran, Iraq and North Korea as an "axis of evil" that could be targeted in the next phase of the "war against terror". Mr Bush's remarks caused disquiet in European capitals, not least because the EU is engaged in an energetic dialogue with Tehran aimed at bolstering reformers in Iran's government.
European leaders fear that attacking Iraq could alienate the Arab world and provoke more violence in the Middle East. And the EU is still smarting after Mr Bush's decision last year to abandon dialogue with North Korea.
The presence of EU citizens in the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay has further strained relations with Washington and some EU leaders are growing weary with Mr Bush's demands for unqualified support for his campaign against his country's enemies.
Germany's chancellor, Mr Gerhard Schröder, admitted last week that he felt like a junior partner in the US-led campaign against international terrorism. But he added that the solution to Europe's feelings of inadequacy lay in building a serious military commitment and a coherent, common security policy.
NATO's Secretary General, Lord Robertson, made a similar point at a security conference in Munich on Saturday when he called on Europe to spend more on defence. "If Europe wants to prevent the US from taking the path of unilateralism or a new isolationism, it must show willingness to sustain forces that can be deployed effectively for crisis management," he said.
Europe's armies have shrunk considerably since the end of the Cold War and defence spending has fallen as a share of national budgets. The old, Cold War armies are unsuited to the tasks envisaged for the EU's Rapid Reaction Force. And an emphasis on professional, highly-trained, flexible forces has accelerated the decline of conscription, which has all but disappeared in many EU member-states.
Although some on the Left in Ireland are wary about what they see as the militarisation of the EU, many left-wingers elsewhere in Europe view the EU's emerging defence identity as an opportunity to forge a European foreign policy that is more independent of Washington.
A test of the EU's willingness to tread an independent foreign policy path will come on Friday when foreign ministers meet in the Spanish town of Caceres. The ministers will discuss the EU's policy on the Middle East and will consider, among other suggestions, a detailed proposal by the French foreign minister, Mr Hubert Védrine.
Mr Védrine wants to encourage Mr Yasser Arafat to dissolve the Palestinian National Assembly and to fight new elections on a commitment to peace and a promise to make the demand for a Palestinian state the starting point for future negotiations with Israel. An alternative proposal by Italy's Mr Silvio Berlusconi for an international conference on the Middle East is regarded as implausible after the US rejected it last Friday.
The EU is hoping to persuade the US to re-engage in the peace process and to exert pressure on Israel to renew talks with Mr Arafat. But if Washington remains on the sidelines, some EU ministers want Europe to launch its own initiative and prove its Common Foreign Policy is a reality rather than just an aspiration.
