EU: European Union foreign ministers have made it clear that they do not favour an invasion of Iraq to oust President Saddam Hussein from power. But they told Iraq that it must admit UN weapons inspectors in order to avoid the threat of war.
Emerging from a two-day meeting in the Danish seaside town of Elsinore on Saturday, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Cowen, said that Iraq's failure to admit the weapons inspectors was not only of concern to the United States.
"This is a demand of the international community. It is a requirement of international law," he said.
Mr Cowen left little doubt, however, about his misgivings over the prospect of unilateral military action by the US against Iraq. He said that Ireland had always sought a peaceful solution to such disputes. "We have always believed in the primacy of the UN in the maintenance of international order," he said.
European governments have become increasingly concerned as senior figures in the US administration, notably the Vice-President, Mr Dick Cheney, and the Defence Secretary, Mr Donald Rumsfeld, have suggested that admitting the inspectors might not be enough for Iraq to avoid war. Germany has been the most vocal opponent of a pre-emptive strike aimed at removing President Saddam from power.
"We reject war. We reject the occupation of Iraq as an instrument to effect regime change," Germany's Foreign Minister, Mr Joschka Fischer, said on Saturday.
Britain's Foreign Secretary, Mr Jack Straw, stressed that it was up to Iraq to fulfil its obligations by admitting weapons inspectors and allowing them to verify whether Baghdad was building an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction.
But diplomatic sources said that, during the meeting, Mr Straw acknowledged that regime change did not represent an adequate justification for attacking Iraq.
The ministers gave a broad welcome to Denmark's proposed Middle East peace initiative, which envisages the creation of a Palestinian state by 2005. The EU will discuss the initiative with the US, the UN and Russia at a meeting of the so-called "Quartet" later this month.
The weekend's meeting was informal and produced no official conclusions or joint statement. But clear differences have emerged within the EU over a US demand that its soldiers should be immune from prosecution by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague. Washington wants to conclude bilateral agreements with other countries guaranteeing that US citizens will not be prosecuted at the court.
Israel, Romania, East Timor and Tajikistan have already signed such agreements with the US, but the European Commission believes they are incompatible with membership of the ICC.
On Friday night, however, the Italian Prime Minister, Mr Silvio Berlusconi, who also serves as his country's Foreign Minister, said Italy was "inclined" to sign an agreement with Washington. Britain is also sympathetic to the US position.
Legal experts from the EU's 15 member-states will meet in Brussels on Wednesday to determine whether the agreements are permissible under the ICC's founding treaty. But most EU governments believe bilateral agreements are unacceptable because they will undermine the court's integrity and effectiveness.
