A wish and a prayer for the Ukrainian democrats, please

Lord knows the EU has used it to all its might, supporting democratic-minded civil society groups and withholding support from governments until certain conditions were fulfilled ...
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Except when they don't toe Jacques Chirac's line-- I remember (and will never forget) Jack Chirac threatening to stymie a couple of EE's membership ambitions to the EU, because they dared to agree with the US about Iraq. They definitely have a price tag on their support.

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I'm sometimes, it seems, really uneducated:

what does

Quote:

EE's membership ambitions to the EU

mean, Lash? (What's a/the 'EE' in this context?)

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The Eastern European countries, Walter. I'm sorry to use the shorthand so often. We'd used it a couple of times before and I thought it was in our vernacular now.

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Thanks. And what did CHIRAC do exactly?

He threatened to stymie which countries when and how?
(By now, I've found out that these countries are: Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan.)

(You certainly know about the procedure, how new EU-membership is gained, do you?)

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A number of those EE countries are now members of the EU (since 1 May, 2004) and have support troops in Iraq.

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.... as have a couple of 'old' EU-members, like the UK, Italy, Denmark, The Netherlands ....

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Spain withdrawed troops from Iraq and Dutch will withdraw in March.

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What remains is that not France, not The UN, and not the EU have done much, individually or collectively, of concrete, proactive effectiveness in the mater of global security. France in particular, and to a lesser extent Germany and Russia, have been the chief architects of obstruction, the way I see it. Had The UN taken decisive remedial action before March of '03, the current related contretemps would not exist. Had The UN not allowed the absurdity of violators participating and even chairing commissions established to prosecute such violations, The UN would not now be facing a credibility problem in that area. Had The UN been more diligent in its administration of the Oil for Food program, that would not be a scandal waved in today's headlines, either.

There's plenty of blame to go around - all the principals - including The US - have screwed up and have done their share of screwin' up other things. The question now is what to do about it. The "System" is broken. It doesn't work. Its not only not effective, its part of the problem. Do we fix it, or do we dump it and build a new one better suited to the task?

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Why not let the Ukrainians choose themselve what they want???????

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As far as the Ukrainians, or the Belorus, or the citizens of any other nation, you betchya they oughtta be able to determine what they want. Sometimes, though, there's gotta be some outside effort undertaken to ensure that what they actually want turns out to be what they actually get.

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Ah, I see: democracy.

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Lash is probably referring to the 17 February, 2003 speech in which Chirac chastised the East European governments who had signed a letter supporting Bush on Iraq. "They missed a good opportunity to keep quiet," he said about that, warning that the countries in question were still in a "dangerous" position, seeing how their accession had not been finalised yet.

Scandalous remarks, those were. As most other European governments agreed, in fact. Not just Blair but German Chancellor Schroeder, too, criticized the remarks as inappropriate. And the accession process since has not been affected - if anything, the remarks backfired on Chirac.

So how any of this episode thus proves Lash's assertion about "toeing Jacques Chirac's line" is totally unclear to me. Who was made to toe Chirac's line? Not the East-European countries in question, for sure. Poland, for example, went on to become one of the US's main partners in Iraq. And their not toeing his line has not affected their prospective EU membership in the least either - in fact, Romania and Bulgaria's track to a 2007 accession was just a week or two ago reconfirmed, even despite serious doubts about Romanian corruption and political transparency. Neither have Chirac's remarks impacted any of the ways in which the EU has "supported democratic-minded civil society groups", so how Lash proposes to have proven or disproven anything concerning the post she quoted also remains unclear to me.

This is all fairly typical for the level of argument presented here. Confusing the main thrust of the (massive) EU funding, accession and development process with some offhand remarks of one of the then-15 EU heads of state (that were, additionally, widely criticized by the other heads of state and heeded by noone) - and then somehow claiming that those remarks represent the line EU members are supposed to be "toeing". Evidence is not needed, the name Chirac should suffice to make the point. Ah, the logical twists one needs to bend oneself in to keep one's enemy images intact, huh. God prevent having to acknowledge that one's on the same side somewhere.

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Walter Hinteler wrote:

Ah, I see: democracy.

You disagree with the American and European financial support to democratic groups in the Ukraine, Walter?

That would surprise me, kinda. I mean, doesn't, say, your party's Friedrich Ebert Stiftung engage in the same kind of financial/organisational support of pro-democratic groups in Eastern Europe? I hear that in the Ukraine they've been organising seminars for trade unionists, summer schools for young politicians, professional training programs for independent journalists, for example .. ?

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The EU agreed, btw, that those ten new members, which joined this, could join on 26 February, 2001.

That year, Chirac said: "If relations between Russia and the European Union are to become more and more integrated, I do not believe that Russia will purely and simply join the union. I do not believe it is Russia's calling."Source

This is the only evedence I could find, where he was toing about (one of) the EE countries.

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Walter, I think I know what remarks of Chirac's Lash was referring to, see my post above.

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Merry Andrew wrote:

A number of those EE countries are now members of the EU (since 1 May, 2004) and have support troops in Iraq.

Yes. That's true. So, if I'd said "Chirac refused to admit them to the UN", well then, you'd have disproved me.

He was just very rude, condescending and he threatened their memberships.
_____________

Tuesday, 18 February, 2003, 17:55 GMT
Chirac blasts EU candidates

Chirac's outburst against applicants surprised observers
By Oana Lungescu
BBC European regional correspondent

French President Jacques Chirac launched an unprecedented attack on the east European candidates for EU membership that signed two public letters of support for the American stance on Iraq.

At the end of an emergency summit in Brussels, Mr Chirac called their behaviour "childish" and warned it could have an impact on their hopes of joining the EU.
France was already concerned that the former communist countries would become America's Trojan horse within the EU and Nato - but the two letters have clearly stung President Chirac to the quick.

In an extraordinary outburst, he described the behaviour of the candidate countries as "dangerous".

Joining the EU takes some consideration and consultation, he said, and these countries were reckless and not very well-behaved.
"They missed a great opportunity to shut up," he chided the candidates, and their pro-American stance could feed public hostility to EU expansion.

Chilly reception

Eight former communist countries are set to join the EU next year, but Mr Chirac was particularly critical of the poorest applicants, Romania and Bulgaria, which will have to wait until 2007.

Their position is already very delicate, he said, and if they wanted to diminish their chances of joining the EU they could not have chosen a better way.

So the leaders of the applicant countries will get a chilly reception when they come to Brussels on Tuesday to be briefed on the summit results - even if Mr Chirac has already gone home.

Last week France rejected a British request for the candidates to join the talks on Iraq.

Even though it is unlikely that expansion can be stopped by the depth of French feeling, this first incident has shown that alliances will be much more unpredictable and fraught in a Union of 25 and more countries.
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nimh-- It is obvious that Chirac was trying to stiff arm the small EE's into lock-step with his opinion on the war--the letter they signed was in support of the US. There is no other reasonable way to see it. He tried to bully them into agreement with him--or at least silence--they missed a good opportunity to shut up...?

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Walter Hinteler wrote:

Why not let the Ukrainians choose themselve what they want???????

Yes. I couldn't agree more!

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I agree, also. Thankfully, they weren't railroaded into accepting Russia's choice for them.

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Lash wrote:

He was just very rude, condescending and he threatened their memberships.

Yes he was.

How that substantiates your assertion earlier though, I dunno. After all, you wrote:

Lash wrote:

nimh wrote:
Lord knows the EU has used it to all its might, supporting democratic-minded civil society groups and withholding support from governments until certain conditions were fulfilled ...

Except when they don't toe Jacques Chirac's line [..] They definitely have a price tag on their support.

Chirac did not speak for the EU. He was rebuked by other EU leaders. His remarks had no impact on EU policy towards these new and future members. So your point is, apart from that Chirac personally is an unpleasant politician? What's that supposed to say about the EU?

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Yushchenko's Viennese doctors were threatened with murder themselves

From today's Sueddeutsche Zeitung, on the poisoning of Yushchenko, news of how the doctors at the Viennese clinic that examined him were hampered by death threats from the Ukraine themselves:

Quote:

Both Wicke and also Yushchenko's examining doctor Nikolai Korpan were meanwhile apparently threatened with "problems" by unknown persons, yes even with outright murder, which necessitated police protection for the doctors at times. It never became fully clear, to whom in the Ukraine the truth about the poisoning attempt was so unwelcome, that he would resort to such massive threat gestures in a foreign country. For certain, in any case, is that the process of diagnosing Yushchenko in the Rudolfinerhaus was slowed down by pressure from outside. ("Ärzte als Detektive")

Yushchenko's strange dinner with secret service chief Smeshko

The fingers are pointing to Igor Smeshko, the chief of the Ukrainian intelligence service. It was him whom Yushchenko had dinner with the day before Yushchenko started suffering from extreme pain. And a strange conversation it had been too:

Quote:

The opposition leader said that it was Smeshko who took the initiative for the meeting, he had wanted to pass along "distinctly important information". But then there was no such information [at the meeting], they simply chatted non-commitally and not at all confidentially about the upcoming elections. The dinner was thus only staged in order to poison Yushchenko, his supporters have insisted since. ("Die Giftmischer von Kiew")

How the Ukrainian secret service was assigned the investigation of the poisoning it was itself suspected of

You'll have noted that the Ukraine's public prosecutor, Svyatoslav Piskun, has now announced he will take the case of Yushchenko's poisoning back up again. So what happened last time - didn't they research it before? Well, they did. Piskun's predecessor, fired last week, had taken up Yushchenko's case - and assigned the SBU, the Ukrainian intelligence service, with investigating it. Yes, the same SBU that is suspected of being behind the poisoning in the first place. Within four weeks, it arrived at the conclusion that the case was baseless and that Yushchenko was probably suffering from a herpes infection. As a Yushchenko spokesman points out, this was tantamount to "making the goat into the gardener".

In the East-Ukraine, calls for censorship and conspiracy theories about how Yushchenko will sell out the country to EU and US

News about the Viennese doctors' conclusions is widely reported in the Ukraine:

Quote:

The news from Vienna dominated all the frontpages and news broadcasts in the Ukraine this weekend. Most media made an effort to report objectively. This too is one of the results of the three-week "Revolution in Orange": most of the Kiev editors have no fear anymore for the press controllers of the presidential administration. ("Bulletin mit Sprengkraft")

But in the East-Ukraine, there is resistance to the news:

Quote:

In the districts of Donetsk and Lugansk, the bulwarks of support for [Yanukovich], there were sceptical comments. To "protect [the population] from false information", the regional soviet of Lugansk, an industrial city close to the Russian border, decided to request in Kiev the prohibition of the "anticonstitutional station Channel 5". [..] Several speakers at a Yanukovich rally in his hometown of Donetsk unfolded a simple scenario of how the Viennese doctors had gotten to their report: Austria, which never got over the loss of the West-Ukraine with [the city of] Lemberg (Lviv) after World War I, belongs to the EU after all; it is well-known that the EU supports Yushchenko, who in return has signalled foreign policy compromises.

Yanukovich himself was even more clear about it:

Quote:

"Yushchenko was not just the lackey of the EU, but of the US too. Washington has financed his campaign. He warned that Yushchenko, if he were to win in the rerun of the elections, would "sell the country to the Americans".

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A wish and a prayer for the Ukrainian democrats, please

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