Will the eurozone collapse?

Germany, Greece and exiting the Eurozone, a Stratfor analysis.

Trying to understand the current ups and downs of the markets, beyond the urban-journalistic mythologies.

Speed control in foreign affairs

Diplomacy and diplomats are rarely in love with speed. Sometimes, they look like living completely out of time. Your "now" could mean, in terms of diplomatic efforts, at least one year or so. Achieving concrete results is always a matter of patience, thinking more than ten times and mostly, avoiding to show off too soon the results.

This pace is visible in what you could call the big international "files". An example. During the last presidential campaign, president Barack Obama promised to close Guantanamo Bay. But, of course, it is not only a political decision and behind the curtains, lots of diplomatic negotiations were necessary in order to secure a safe final deal.

When it comes to the issue of the Middle East peace process, from outside it is a neverending process, not yet reaching its final solution. But, as long as you have to deal with complicate partners and with weak or lack of coherent institutional frameworks, it is not a wonder we are still far from a solution.

The communications in this issue are extremely delicate, as long as any declaration could, in fact, create expectations or disappointments and, in fact, complicate the diplomatic process. But, making declarations on this issue is a guarantee of winning the attention of the public opinion. And, in some situations, it is hard to avoid this temptation.

It is how I am trying to read the latest French declarations regarding the Palestinian state. In an interview for Journal de Dimanche, published February 21, the French Minister of Foreign and European Affairs, Bernard Kouchner, declared:

What’s important at the moment is to build facts on the ground: France is training Palestinian police officers; businesses are being set up on the West Bank… Then we can envisage the rapid proclamation of a Palestinian State and its immediate recognition by the international community, even before its borders are negotiated – I’d be tempted by that – by [recognition by] European countries. I’m not sure of being followed or even of being right.

The declaration was made ahead of the visit in Paris of the Palestinian Authority President, Mahmoud Abbas. After the meeting with Abbas, February 22, not other declarations were made. The declaration from Journal de Dimanche could be considered more than fortuit: police officers and business interest are not, by far, the conditions to talk about a state. You need, for example, legal institutions, reliable fiscal authorities, law enforcement authorities etc. And, what is more surprising for somebody who, as Kouchner had a certain experience with "new" states, is the danger of talking - at the official/diplomatic level - about a state without knowing what the borders of this state are.

The experience he apparently gathered in the Balkans, as first UN Representatives and Head of the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), between 1999-2001, was not illustrative enough of the difficult process of building a state? Very hard to understand this concern for "speed" instead of looking for realistic solutions.

February 23, he is back. Together with the Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos, Kouchner signed an article: "A Palestinian state, when?". Stressing the need for a "tough, credible reform based on financial transparency and fighting corruption", to be implemented by the Palestinian Authority, the authors are stressing "the inexorable outlines of the final settlement: absolute security for Israel, recognition when the time comes of a Palestinian State on the basis of the 1967 borders with land swaps, and Jerusalem as the capital of the two States". "Recognition when the times comes". "(...) when the times comes". No speed here.

Spain is currently holding the EU six-month presidency and have a long experience in dealing with the conflict in the Middle East. The diplomacy chief Moratinos was between 1996 and 2003 the European Union special Representative for the Middle East Process. The experience of Spain with the Middle East was controversial in some respects.

Spain continued to consider itself as a bridge between the Arab world and Western Europe, and adopted frequently a pro-Arab stance in most Middle East conflicts. For years, Spain was the only West European country that did not recognize Israel. The Spanish government finally established diplomatic relations with the state of Israel in January 1986. Shortly after, Spain accorded diplomatic status to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) mission in Madrid in August 1986. This political support turned at the end of the 1980s into an expanded trade and cultural relations and Spain intended to profile itself as a bridge between different cultures.

Spain hosted in October 1991, the Madrid Conference, who made possible, for the first time ever the reconsidering of the dialogue formula between the main stake-holders in the Middle East, by focusing on an intensive multilateral and bilateral level of negotiations. In 2005, Spain launched together with Turkey the Alliance of Civilisations aimed to bring together the European heritage and to create bridges between Europe and the Middle East. In the same year, during the OSCE chairmanship-in-office, Spain hosted in Cordoba the OSCE Conference on Anti-Semitism and on Other Forms of Intolerance. Shortly after taking the EU presidency, this January, Spanish authorities supported any kind of efforts "to ensure that Middle East peace negotiations resume as soon as possible".

Everybody is waiting for results in the Middle East. So many years of waiting, so many negotiations started and shortly after aborted, so many public declarations. But, in the same time, pondering a final solution, could be The Solution in the area, and not a solution. Working under the pressure is specific to diplomats. But their main capacity should be to be able to find the best answer. A combination of intuition, general culture and wisdom.

ETA's retro terrorism

behind the latest terror campaign.

Swine Flu Hits Europe With First Confirmed Cases in Britain, Spain

Craig Whitlock

Washington Post

April 27

As the first cases of swine flu outside North America were confirmed Monday in Spain and Scotland, European health officials issued a series of contradictory public warnings and vacillated over whether it was safe to travel to the United States or Mexico.

In Luxembourg, Androulla Vassiliou, the European Union's health commissioner, told reporters she was "not worried at this stage" about a global pandemic spreading to Europe but nonetheless urged all travelers to avoid the United States and Mexico "unless it is very urgent for them."

The statement prompted a rebuke from U.S. health officials, who said there was no need to impose a ban on travel to the United States, where 40 cases of swine flu -- none of them fatal -- have been diagnosed. Richard E. Besser, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, called the E.U. travel warning "quite premature."

Vassiliou later backtracked and said she was simply advising Europeans to avoid "unnecessary travel" to areas in North America where there have been "serious outbreaks" of swine flu in humans.

"People should use their common sense," she told the BBC. "It's unreasonable to ban traveling, or to even advise travelers not to go to, let's say, Chicago or other places where there are no outbreaks. It's only that people should be more careful before they leave."

The European Union said it would hold an emergency meeting of health ministers from its 27 member countries to coordinate a response to the spread of swine flu. The meeting, however, is not scheduled to occur until Thursday.

Meanwhile, individual European countries have issued a melange of travel and health advisories, with some warning against travel to Mexico but others playing down the risk.

Robert Madelin, the European Union's director-general for health and consumer protection, said it was imperative for European countries to fashion a united response.

"If we do not coordinate, individual regions and countries take measures which are inconsistent and create huge economic and personal costs," he told reporters in Brussels.

In Germany, the foreign ministry issued an advisory Monday against nonessential travel to Mexico. It urged the public to monitor conditions in the United States but did not warn against travel there.

Two large German tourism companies, TUI and Thomas Cook, canceled flights to Mexico City until at least next week. They told customers it was still safe to travel directly to Mexican beach resorts, for the time being.

Officials at Frankfurt and Munich international airports, two of Europe's busiest, distributed swine-flu informational leaflets and instructed employees to watch for passengers who might be infected.

"I think we can assume that we will see the virus here soon," Michael Pfleiderer, a German government virologist, told Bavarian radio. "But that does not mean that we should paint the whole picture dark or even black." He said that normal hygiene measures were sufficient to guard against the virus and that local health agencies were well prepared.

In Spain, health officials confirmed that a 23-year-old university student who returned from Mexico last week had tested positive for the virus. The patient has been isolated in a hospital ward in the town of Almansa since Saturday, but his condition is not serious, said Trinidad Jimenez, the Spanish health minister.

Spanish officials said they were treating 20 other suspected but unconfirmed cases, all involving people who recently traveled to Mexico. Suspected cases were also reported in France, Sweden, Germany and Switzerland.

In Scotland, Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon said late Monday that two people who returned Friday from Mexico had tested "conclusively" for swine flu. Officials said the two patients were being kept in isolation in a hospital in the town of Airdrie and were expected to recover.

Seven people who had been in contact with the travelers have displayed mild flu symptoms but are not being hospitalized, Sturgeon said. "We remain very encouraged by the fact that outside Mexico everyone who has contracted swine flu has experienced mild symptoms only," she said.

British officials said a Canadian tourist visiting Manchester also was suspected of having swine flu after a general test for influenza came back positive. Health officials are investigating 14 other cases involving people with flu-like symptoms who recently traveled to the United States or Mexico. None are hospitalized, however, as they undergo further tests.

British Health Secretary Alan Johnson told the House of Commons that the government had a stockpile of 33 million doses of flu vaccine, enough for about half the United Kingdom's population. He said the government had been building up stockpiles against a potential flu pandemic for the past five years.

Johnson said the government had stepped up health checks for passengers arriving in the United Kingdom. Passengers on planes from Mexico have been questioned by a doctor before being allowed to leave the aircraft.

Correspondent Kevin Sullivan in London contributed to this report.

Statement of the World Health Organization and details about the pandemic alert

Spain's retreat from Kosovo raises eyebrows

Victoria Burnett
International Herald Tribune

March 24

When Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero of Spain withdrew Spanish peacekeepers from Iraq in 2004, he got the cold shoulder from former President George W. Bush. So ever since the election of Barack Obama, Mr. Zapatero has relished the prospect of working with a U.S. leader with whom he shares not only a birthday but also, in his view, a progressive agenda and a desire to resolve conflict through dialogue.

But Spain's unexpected announcement last week that it would withdraw its troops from the NATO-led peacekeeping force in Kosovo has marred the nascent relationship with the Obama administration and raised questions about Spain's reliability as an ally, diplomats and foreign policy experts say.

Spain informed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and U.S. officials of the decision less than 24 hours before Carme Chacón, the Spanish defense minister, announced it during a visit Thursday to a Spanish military base in Kosovo.

A State Department spokesman, Robert Wood, said that the United States was "deeply disappointed" by the announcement an unusually strong reproach to an ally. Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, the NATO secretary general, also expressed disapproval, saying that any decision to withdraw from the Kosovo force should be made within the alliance, according to news reports.

Spain has just over 600 troops stationed in Kosovo as part of the NATO-led force of 15,400 soldiers. But the Spanish government, which is trying to curb regional nationalism in Catalonia and the Basque Country, does not recognize Kosovo as a sovereign nation.

The problem, analysts and experts said, was not so much Spain's decision to withdraw troops as the abrupt way it was announced. According to a report in the newspaper El País, Foreign Minister Miguel Moratinos was one of several senior diplomats who were unaware of the decision before it became public. On Monday, in a show of unity, Moratinos said that the whole government backed the Kosovo withdrawal.

But diplomats and experts said they were baffled by Mr. Zapatero's decision to announce a potentially controversial decision just before the Group of 20 meeting in London on April 1-2 and the NATO summit meeting in Strasbourg a day later meetings that are keenly anticipated in Zapatero's inner circle as an opportunity to work with Mr. Obama.

While the decision to pull out of Kosovo was logical for Spain, they said, it was not urgent. Spain has made clear that as the mission in Kosovo turns to building national institutions, it will no longer have a role there.

Jordi Vaquer i Fanés, director of the Center for International Relations and Development Studies in Barcelona, said the handling of the announcement made the government look amateurish at a time when Mr. Zapatero was hoping to burnish his international credentials.

Mr. Vaquer said the incident reflected Mr. Zapatero's lack of understanding "of how these organizations work," adding, "What we have done here is to lose weight within the European Union and NATO."

Several newspaper columnists and analysts noted that the announcement had echoes of Spain's 2004 pullout from Iraq. "Kosovo is not Iraq, but two withdrawals are more than a coincidence," José Ignacio Torreblanca, head of the European Council on Foreign Relations in Madrid, wrote in El País. "Some will ask, what is the problem with Spain?"

Mr. Zapatero scored a victory when he won a seat at the G-20 meeting of industrialized and emerging economies in Washington in November. At the time, Spain's conservative banking practices and tough regulation were admired as a possible blueprint for other countries in the wake of the financial crisis, though they did not prevent some of Spain's leading banks from getting into trouble.

But some analysts and critics have said the Spanish prime minister does not always navigate diplomatic waters well. Still, the damage does not appear to be irreparable. Spain could still prove itself an effective partner for the United States on issues such as Afghanistan, Guantánamo and Cuba.

Spain has resisted calls to increase its force of nearly 800 troops in Afghanistan, and officials close to Mr. Zapatero indicate that he is inclined to provide civilian help, for example, to train the police. But press reports indicate that Ms. Chacón is open to sending more troops if the United States presents a convincing Afghan strategy.

Mr. Vaquer said: "The Kosovo thing is not a major, major mistake. Our credibility has been damaged, but we can recover from this."

Faces of a possible new coming anarchy

Six days after the police shooting of a teenager, the anti-government protests widespread in ten Greek cities. In the last days, Greeks also protested in Paris, Berlin, New York, the Hague, Moscow and the opposition socialist party is calling for elections. Also under the influence of the global economic crisis, the Greek economy is likely to continue its decline. On Wednesday, the trade unions were on a 24-hours general strike opposing pensions reform and privatizations. As a movement of solidarity with the Greek youth, Spanish youngsters from Barcelona and Madrid attacked on Wednesday a police station and a bank. The current economic crisis haven't arose just out of the blue; it is the consequence of a long time mix between uncoordinated policies - social, political and economic levels. Bad handled and not explained, these policies lead to protests, by people with an unsecure future. It is too early to consider that we experience now the death of liberal or socialist policies, as long as the crisis is producing effects at the global level, whatever the political orientations of the central governments. Was Argentina's crisis from the beginning of 2000 a warning?