Global Policy Forum

By Elaine Sciolino

In another call for the Bush administration to slow its march toward war, the EU commissioner for external relations warned Wednesday that Europe might withhold money for the reconstruction of Iraq if the United States waged war without the approval of the Security Council. "It will be that much more difficult for the EU to cooperate fully and on a large scale - also in the longer-term reconstruction process - if events unfold without proper UN cover and if the member states remain divided," Chris Patten said.

Speaking during a debate in the European Parliament in Strasbourg, Patten said that an American military campaign that lacked the legal support of the United Nations would do enormous damage to the authority of the United Nations, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and relations between Europe and the United States. The specter of war has caused a deep and bitter split in the 15-country European Union - the world's biggest aid donor - with Britain and Spain embracing the American call to war and France and Germany calling for continued international weapons inspections under UN auspices.

The heads of state of the European Union will meet for a regularly scheduled meeting in Brussels, Belgium, next week, and Iraq is expected to dominate the agenda. "In the past I have sometimes been accused of issuing a threat of EU noncooperation if the United States chooses to proceed with UN backing," Patten said.

"That is not my point," he said. "I am making, rather, a simple observation of fact: that if it comes to war, it will be very much easier" to make a case for generosity "if there is no dispute about the legitimacy of the military action that has taken place." Patten said that the European Union's budget was already "heavily committed." "It is of the greatest importance that if a war is waged in Iraq, the UN should authorize the decision to attack," he said.

Patten made his remarks during a debate in the European Parliament in which deputies expressed their overwhelming opposition to a war waged only by the United States. The Bush administration has said that it is impossible to predict the cost of postwar reconstruction. But Patten's remarks follow an assessment made by the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations that estimates the cost of reconstruction and peacekeeping at $20 billion a year. The European Union had so far earmarked E15 million ($16.5 million) in relief aid for Iraq this year.

Patten also questioned the Bush administration's assertion that the overthrow of President Saddam Hussein of Iraq by war would help combat terrorism and spread democracy in the Middle East. "As a general rule, are wars not more likely to recruit terrorists than to deter them?" he said. "It is hard to build democracy at the barrel of a gun, when history suggests it is more usually the product of long internal development in a society." "What I'm absolutely sure about," he said, "is that to invade Iraq, while failing to bring peace to the Middle East, would create exactly the sort of conditions in which terrorism would be likely to thrive."

And Patten joined a chorus of other European leaders in criticizing the United States for failing to publish a much-promised "road map" for Israeli-Palestinian peace drawn up last year by the United States, the European Union, the United Nations and Russia. During the debate Wednesday, all of the principal parliamentary groups underscored the need for Security Council authority before going to war. "Unilateral action would be a violation of the charter of the United Nations," said the Socialist floor leader, Enrique Baron Crespo. "An attack under these conditions would create fertile ground for international terrorism." The Liberal group leader, Graeme Watson, said: "It is claimed in London, Washington and Madrid that war could be short, swift and successful. With UN support this could indeed be the case. But without it, in a conflict which divides the international community, we could be on the brink of another Hundred Years' War which could bring down regimes well beyond Iraq."

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