Sabres rattle as trade with tyrants continues

A SPOKESMAN for the European Commission yesterday warned China that any attempt to punish Denmark, the Netherlands, or Ireland over their human rights stance at the UN would certainly bring forward "some form of solidarity" from the EU.

The Trade Commissioner, Sir Leon Brittan, said: "I would deplore any form of retaliatory action against member states."

They'll be shaking in their boots in Beijing, although diplomatic sources there believe the Chinese will, this time at least, confine themselves to sabre rattling and the cancellation of the odd visit.

Anyone under the illusion that the fashioning of a more robust European Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) would see the EU emerge as a brave new force for peace, justice, and democracy will have had their illusions somewhat tested by the unedifying sight of the China UN debacle. Such values are grand as long as they don't interfere with commercial interests.

In the end in Geneva, China mustered 27 votes to 17, with nine abstentions, in favour of its blocking resolution against Denmark's proposal for action over human rights abuses. And although France, Germany, Italy and Spain opposed the Chinese attempt to block the putting down of the Danish resolution, their clear signal that they would not support the latter certainly provided diplomatic cover for some of the others who were to abstain or even back the Chinese manoeuvre.

It is difficult to believe that the Ukraine and Belarus, now members of the Council of Europe, would have been prepared to go as far as blocking the resolution or Russia abstain, if the EU had been united. And what of Canada and Australia, which refused to cosponsor the resolution?

"What need we, being come to sense but fumble in a greasy tin ..."

Even Le Monde, that arch defender of French international muscle, accused the Chirac government of pusillanimity in the face of the Chinese implied threat to a billion dollar Airbus contract - a tough stance by the US it pointed out, had not stopped Boeing winning a major order recently.

Of course, the willingness of the French of soft pedal on their criticism of China has to be dressed up in other terms. Constructive engagement", they argue, is more likely to change Chinese attitudes than freezing them out. Why so with China and not Burma, Nigeria, Zaire ...?

And then there is always the old argument of the arms trader that if I don't give them guns someone else will.

France should understand the argument well. In 1995, the US administration blocked a $1 billion oil deal between Iran and the US company, Conoco, as part of its attempts to isolate Tehran for its support for international terrorism. The French company, Total, snapped up the contract.

Yesterday, EU ambassadors to Tehran, recalled last week in protest at the irrefutable evidence found by a German court linking Iran to a bombing in the Mykonos restaurant in Berlin, were meeting in Brussels to discuss whether a meeting of foreign ministers on April 28th should extend the action.

They will have received a plea from the International Rushdie Defence Campaign reminding them that the Mykonos prosecutors have also received death threats, that May 3rd will mark the 3,000th day of the fatwa against Salman Rushdie, and that the Iranian government has just promoted to a senior government post a man who last month raised the bounty on Rushdie to $2.5 million.

The group argues that "critical dialogue" with Iran has clearly failed and that the EU should step up financial notably on its debt repayments and trade and diplomatic pressure on Iran.

But the tide is moving in the opposite direction. The US, worried that Tehran is making overtures to Moscow and anxious to maintain pressure on Iraq, is keen for geo political reasons to reassess its isolation of Iran. And the German Foreign Minister, Mr Klaus Kinkel, made clear on Monday that the withdrawal of ambassadors would be as far as Bonn would be seeking.

EU diplomats suggest Iran's measured response to the recall and its willingness to protect EU citizens in Tehran during raised tension is a sign of a willingness to improve relations as soon as possible. And then, of course, there is trade.

Germany does $2 billion a year of business with Iran and holds some $5 billion of its external debt. As a spokesman for the industrial giant, Krupp - in which Iran has a 22 per cent stake - put it recently: "Iran's relationship with Krupp is a business one and is not affected by politics." Hands off!

So that's CFSP then. Trading with tyrants is good because it strengthens the forces of commerce and openness to the world, which, as we all know, will in the end be forces for democracy. It's a political version of the economic theory of the rising tide lifting all boats - and just as leaky.