UPI hears ... Insider notes from United Press International for Feb. 13, 2003
www.upi.com From the International Desk Published 2/13/2003 11:56 AM
High-level French politicians are claiming that U.S. diplomats are threatening Paris with an effort to strip France of its permanent membership of the U.N. Security Council as the row over Iraq escalates. One has even gone public. Pierre Lellouche, a senior deputy for President Jacques Chirac's UMP party in the National Assembly, and head of France's delegation to the NATO parliamentary assembly, tells Le Monde that the United States wants France's seat to be transferred to the European Union as a whole. (No such threats to the British seat on the Security Council, apparently). Lellouche, seen as one of the best-informed and most pro-NATO of French politicians, is also claiming that French officials have been warned "will be dealt right out of the reconstruction of Iraq and of the new geo-political system" once the war is over. U.S. officials tell UPI that Lellouche "must have been smoking something."
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The fact is that initial consultations between U.S. officials have led to the conclusion that there are few ways to punish France. Most economic sanctions would be illegal under World Trade Organization rules. Any move against France's U.N. seat would run into a French veto and put friendly Tony Blair into an impossible position as a partner of France in the European Union. The one area that could hurt Paris would be for the Pentagon to frown on French (and German) arms sales. Kuwait, long eying the purchase of German-built Fuchs armored vehicles, has already been told this would be frowned on. But the two big French defense groups, EADS and Thales, last year sold $500 million and $300 million in goods respectively to the United States. This is peanuts in defense terms, and U.S. officials do not want to punish Raytheon, maker of the Patriot missiles, which currently has a close partnership with Thales making Firefinder radars that just secured a $150 million sale to India. Besides, after the United States used political muscle and easy credit terms to persuade both South Korea and Poland to buy F-16s rather than French Mirage warplanes, there is little more damage to U.S.-French relations that blocking arms sales could do. Moreover, after buying the British defense firm's Racal Electronics, Pilkington Optronics, Shorts Missile Systems and Thomson Marconi Sonar, Thales now counts as nearly half-British, the last people the Bush administration wants to hurt.
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Maybe Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was right to draw that distinction between Old Europe and the New. The European Union is convening an emergency summit in Brussels Monday night of its 15 heads of government to try and resolve splits over Iraq. Britain and Spain suggested that the 10 candidate members of the EU from Eastern Europe, who are scheduled to become full members next year, should be invited to attend. Absolutely not, insisted Germany, France and Belgium -- the core of Old Europe. Those new members, strongly pro-American after their grim years of enforced membership in the old Soviet-dominated Warsaw Pact, make up the "New Europe" that Rumsfeld admires. No wonder the Old Guard insisted on keeping them out. Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic will have to settle for a "readout" of the decisions of the 15 on Tuesday, after what looks like being a contentious dinner in Brussels.
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After the dramas of economic collapse in Argentina and a bitter strike in Venezuela, Bolivia is turning into South America's new trouble spot. An extraordinary 5-hour street battle between armed police and the army has left 16 dead and 80 wounded on the streets of the capital, La Paz, after striking policemen took to the streets to demonstrate against a tax hike. Along with the country's 750,000 other civil servants, the Bolivian police have been hit with a new emergency tax that creams 12.5 percent off their paychecks. It may be a crisis for the new President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, popularly known since his inauguration six months ago as "Goni," but it's another triumph for the political wizards of the International Monetary Fund, who backed the government's decision to cut the budget deficit from 8 percent to 5 percent of gross domestic product by imposing the new tax.
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No, they were not UFOs, as some pilots initially feared when 12 airliners had to abort landing and take avoiding action at Malaysia's Penang International Airport Saturday. It was just the celebrations for Chinese new year, traditionally marked by the release of flying lanterns. Known as "Kung Ming" lanterns, after an ancient Chinese general who used them to send messages across enemy lines, they are hot air balloons made of paper and bamboo, and candles or oil-soaked rags provide both the heat to make them rise and the light that dances in the sky. They are now banned for 5 miles around all of Malaysia's airports -- except for this Saturday night over Penang, when the airlines have been asked to suspend flights for 4 hours to mark Chap Goh Mei, the 15th and final day of the new year.