For this it places the primary blame on the Greek Cypriots and their hard-line government. Papadopoulos has consistently declined to respond to the request of the UN Secretary-General to indicate what changes to the Annan plan would be acceptable to his government, a refusal he maintained when the two men met in Paris on 28 February.

The Greek Cypriots defend their position by saying it is unreasonable to ask them to disclose their negotiating position before any new talks are convened. The Crisis Group responds by saying that all recent experience, from the Balkans and elsewhere, is that negotiations never get anywhere unless both sides are willing, at least, to indicate their opening bids in advance.

The ICG report sternly warns:

They should realise that if they persist in their refusal to engage with the United Nations and with Cyprus’s other international partners, the island will slip by default toward permanent partition and the independence of the north, whether formally recognized or not.

In the meantime, the continued division of the island, with only the Greek Cypriot part admitted to membership, is insidiously introducing a “poison”, into the workings of the European Union. This word was used by Michael Emerson, a senior fellow at the Centre for European Policy Studies CEPS), who presided at the launch meeting of the ICG report.

He cited as examples not only the complication of the membership negotiations with Turkey, but the delay which disagreements over Cyprus were causing to the conclusion of ‘Neighbourhood agreements’ with the three Southern Caucasus states of Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia.

In the absence of a genuine prospect for a constitutional settlement, the report concentrates on recommending ‘unilateral’ steps which the various parties could take to make the present situation more bearable and to leave open the possibility of future progress.

For the EU, these steps would include energetic measures to end the isolation of the north, including the implementation of its existing pledges on aid and trade, the opening of a Commission delegation in the north of the island, and the incorporation of northern Cyprus into the EU customs union with Turkey.

The US is recommended to upgrade its office in the north to a branch of its embassy in Nicosia and to increase its contact at all levels with officials and civil society. The UN is urged to redouble its efforts to achieve negotiation over the Annan Plan, and to proceed with the creation of a Trust Fund for Northern Cyprus, under its development programme.

The Turkish Cypriots are advised to take more vigorous steps to reinstate Greek Cypriot property, to adopt the EU acquis in such areas as trade and public sector reform, and to adopt the Common External Tariff. So far as the Greek Cypriot side is concerned, the ICG’s recommendations are addressed more to the opposition and to civil society, in the hope of pressurising the government into a more co-operative stance.

The Greek and Turkish governments are also pressed to take action to calm the situation: Greece by exerting its moderating influence over the Cyprus government, and Turkey by implementing its customs union with all 25 member states of the EU as committed, by beginning a limited withdrawal of Turkish troops and by committing itself to repatriating a number of its settlers back to Turkey.

There is little doubt that if such steps were to be taken, the long-term prospects for a settlement would improve. Yet in the end, it would depend upon a change of mind by the present government of Cyprus, or perhaps its defeat in a general election.

Dick Leonard is author of The Economist Guide to the European Union.

During Morales’ electoral campaign against Jorge Quiroga (former President and representative of the Santa Cruz business elite), the indigenous candidate, leader of coca farmers and head of the Movement Toward Socialism (“MAS”), based his agenda upon two pledges in order to secure the election.

The first was to nationalise the extraction process of Bolivian natural resources and “hand it back” to State control. This process includes natural gas and oil fields, mines, and plantations, especially of soybeans.

The second pledge was to retake the path to the Pacific Ocean, lost to Chile during the Pacific War at the end of the 19th Century. An ancient Bolivian dream, this access to the sea is the solution envisaged by Morales for Bolivia’s need to export to other countries swiftly and easily. Also worth bearing in mind is that Evo Morales’ electoral conquest was openly financed by Venezuela’s President Hugo Chávez and made relatively transparent to the media based on Chávez’s addresses to Venezuelan newspapers.

The first electoral promise was put into effect with the occupation of natural gas fields operated by Petrobras, a Brazilian company which alone invested the equivalent of 18% of Bolivia’s GDP. The occupation, marked by nationalist speeches and actions, represented an enormous defeat for Brazilian foreign policy and an immense political conquest for Venezuela’s President Hugo Chávez.

As his hand in the episode became widely known to both Latin American society and media, Chávez began to be recognised as the continent’s chief political strategist and the true regional “leader”, instead of “virtual leader” Luís Inácio Lula da Silva. Besides Petrobras’ operations, fields operated by YPF Repsol (Argentina-Spain), Total (France), and British Gas (UK) are also being targeted for Evo Morales’ nationalisation policy.

The decision of the Bolivian president may have the following impacts on Bolivia:

1. Impoverishing Bolivia’s economy, and consequently its population, due to the flight of capital backing up the internal economy;
2. Undermining foreign confidence in Bolivia during Morales’ government and any subsequent administration, in case an ideologically-aligned successor is elected;
3. Obsolescence of the technology employed in gas exploration due to lack of equipment maintenance;
4. Severance of stable relationships with the following governments: Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Chile.

As regards South America, Morales’ actions may lead to the following negative consequences:

1. Political turmoil in the region, causing polarisation between those supporting and those rejecting Morales’ stance;
2. Energy issues emerging from a failure to transport Bolivian gas (in Brazil, 51% of natural gas comes from Bolivia and 5.1% of Brazil’s energy grid is dependent upon Bolivian gas);
3. Economic issues emerging from a lack of gas supply in the continent. Ceramic, glass, food and beverage industries are those more heavily dependent on gas for production;
4. A lack of confidence in the region as a whole on the part of foreign investors, due to feeble responses by the main South American governments towards Morales’ breach of contracts. Such weakness may represent to investors that South American governments are unreliable and do not have the commitment to abide by their own contracts.

In order to grasp a better understanding of the scenario, it is essential to understand the previous situation, and how it has changed, for companies exploiting natural gas in Bolivia. In May 2005, the Bolivian Congress passed a bill to tax prospecting companies 32%, in addition to the current duty of 18% charged in the form of royalties. Arguing that the contracts had been closed “illegally” and in an “unfair” way, Morales’ decree of nationalisation raised duty on gas from 50% to 82%. It was also declared that companies not complying with the new regime will have to leave the country within 180 days.

In addition to this, there is another event worth noting to understand on some forecasts for the continent. A week prior to the nationalisation decree, the Bolivian President announced that his government did not have the technical capability to occupy foreign companies in order to nationalise them. However, upon fulfilling his decree, Morales made it known that the technical portion of the process would be carried out by Venezuelan specialists from PDVSA (Venezuela’s state-owned oil company).

Venezuela’s Involvement

The attitudes adopted in by the Presidents of Bolivia and Venezuela clearly show that Morales was only capable of taking such steps under the auspices of Hugo Chávez. Since taking office as President in 1998, the latter has cultivated an obsession with disseminating the thoughts of Simon Bolívar (the liberator of several South American countries in their struggles for independence) throughout the continent. Bolívar, and likewise Chávez, had dreams of a strong, united Latin America, representing a single Latin American homeland.

Owing to current oil prices on the international market, Chávez relies on a significant budget to sponsor his foreign policy. In addition to several populist measures put into effect in his homeland, the Venezuelan leader has been using the same rhetoric elsewhere in the continent. To forge an ideological coalition around this ideal, he has openly supported the electoral campaigns of certain like-minded candidates in the continent. Morales’ victory in Bolivia was the result of intense involvement by Chávez, and the same support was afforded to the losing candidate in last week’s Presidential election in Peru, nationalist candidate Ollanta Humala.

Hugo Chávez seeks to unify the continent by means of an energetic coalition, merging Venezuela’s oil and Bolivia’s gas into an expensive network of oil and gas refineries and pipelines throughout the whole continent. Part of this agenda has already been put into action with the construction of refineries in Bolivia, Argentina and Uruguay. The current scenario in Bolivia stands as a major victory for Chávez, who intends to fill the vacuum left by foreign companies as they depart Bolivia or reduce investment in the country.

Morales’ second pledge

The (partial) fulfillment of the first of Morales’ pledges raises yet more concerns with respect to the second banner of his campaign. The whole continent dreads that, incensed by the national passion of the Bolivian people and Chávez’s support, Morales will engage in a more drastic attitude while seeking to secure access to the sea.

It is very clear today that Chile will not relinquish the northern region of the country, and is thus in opposition to Bolivian intentions. However, the odds of military conflict remain low. Chile has one of the best-trained and best-equipped armies in South America, having purchased eleven F-16 fighters during the last days of Ricardo Lago’s administration, now strategically and significantly stationed at Iquique military base, 200 km from the Bolivian border. At the time of the purchase of these aircraft, the country’s Minister of Defense was current President Michelle Bachelet.

It is likely that in order to ward off tense entanglements with Chile, Morales will adopt measures even more populist in his own country to offset a failure to recover the area lost to Chile. This will imply greater involvement for Chávez, as Morales does not have the budget to carry out significant reforms.

Even without the Charter, however, those rights are steadily being expanded, due to the case law of the European Court of Justice. Based on the wording of Article 12 of the Rome treaty, which states, “any discrimination on the grounds of nationality shall be prohibited”, and on the Maastricht treaty provisions on EU citizenship, the Court has reached a whole series of decisions which have confirmed the rights of individual plaintiffs, and thereby guaranteed that the rights of many others, in similar situations, will be recognized.

Speaking in a personal capacity, the Belgian judge at the Court, Koen Lenaerts, commented on a number of recent cases, in an address to a conference organised last month by the Euro-Citizens’ Action Service (ECAS).

The first of these had been brought by the Commission against the Spanish government, which had passed a law granting all Spanish nationals, foreign residents of Spain, and EU citizens under 21 years of age, free admittance to museums. The Court ruled that EU citizens must be treated on the same basis as Spaniards, and they are now admitted free of charge, whatever their age.

The second concerned a British citizen who had been assaulted during a brief stay in Paris by an unidentified assailant, and had been refused compensation from a national fund, which was restricted to French citizens, lawful foreign residents and nationals of countries which had entered into reciprocal agreements with France. The Court ruled that to deny him compensation would amount to discrimination under Article 12 of the treaty.

The British government had itself been over-ruled in another case, where a German citizen, formerly working in Britain, had been refused a residence permit on the grounds that he was not pursuing an economic activity. The Court ruled that, whereas this would have been a legitimate interpretation of Articles 39, 43 and 49 of the Rome Treaty, it had been superseded by the Maastricht treaty which confers a right of every citizen to “move and reside freely within the territory of the Member States”.

Other cases cited by Judge Lenaerts concerned the right of a Spanish woman living in Germany, but not pursuing an economic activity, to receive family allowances, and two cases from Italy where German and Austrian citizens charged with offences were denied the right of having their cases heard in German, despite the fact that the Italian constitution guaranteed this to its own citizens from South Tyrol.

In the majority of cases, it has only been the enterprise and persistence of individuals in launching complicated and often lengthy judicial processes which has enabled their (and other people’s) rights to be conceded.

Here I must make a rather embarrassing admission. I too could have been one of these intrepid individuals, but funked it because I just couldn’t be bothered. There is a French law that people over 65 are excused paying for a television licence, the only requirement being an attestation from the income tax authority that one’s income is not over a certain (large) amount.

I applied for a free licence on account of a small secondary residence, where we live for only a few weeks in the year, and, not paying income tax in France, submitted my Belgian tax declaration. This was blandly ignored by the French audio/visual authority, despite repeated correspondence. They eventually threatened to set the bailiffs on me if the fee was not paid.

I am not proud to have written out a cheque on the spot, and I hope very much that other EU citizens in comparable situations will follow the example of the plaintiffs in the cases referred to by Judge Lenaerts rather than my own pathetic climb-down. The Court of Justice is doing an excellent job in enforcing the rights of EU citizens, but its hands are tied unless we stand up for ourselves.

Iran does not top most people’s destination lists in the current climate — but worries of suicide bombings and kidnappings that plague its neighbour Iraq are uncommon in an very welcoming country. The greatest danger to your health in Tehran comes from the gridlocked traffic. If the hideous pollution from ancient cars filled with asbestos doesn’t make you sneeze and cough, there is the seeming certainty of being run over. Pedestrian crossings are rare, and no driver pays attention. The only safe tactic is to wait for a group of locals to amass, put them between you and the oncoming vehicles while you step directly into the traffic hoping it will slow down. In this process of blind faith you can see origins of the Shi’a cult of martyrdom. One of many Iranian ironies is that most of the rusty white ‘paykans’ which churn out the pollution, while reminiscent of Cuba, are actually a version of the Hillman Hunter.

Endless clichés are written about the two contrasting Irans — ‘the land where East meets West’, ‘a proud nation of tradition and modernity’. Like most clichés, there is some truth to them. The divide cuts across Tehran — the south is poor, conservative, run-down and yet more fascinating with its museums, heritage and government buildings. The north is full of urbane, upwardly mobile yuppies, eating second-rate Italian food and prattling on their ‘handy’ phones. Like London, perhaps.

Those well-informed, educated Tehranis joke that ‘most Iranians wouldn’t know an atom bomb from a pizza’. Iranian food is a mixed bag. While most restaurants are either traditional or Western style, a menu will not really offer a choice, but merely suggest 20 different types of kebabs. While you might overdose on kebabs, the best food is to be found in people’s houses. If you can secure an invitation, it is well worth the treat and you will experience mouth-watering lamb stews, bejewelled rice with pistachios, fresh herb salads and tasty unleavened bread.

Ayatollah Khomeini’s image is still imposed on the visual landscape. Vast posters are installed of him and his successor, Khamenei, not just on government or religious buildings, but on prominent tower blocks and even, bizarrely, on a vast, expensive, Westernised hotel in Isfahan. The images of the supremes are often accompanied by revolutionary messages — one gem at the airport sternly declared, ‘this revolution is not recognised anywhere in the world without Imam Khomeini’s name’, before breezily saying ‘Have a nice trip!’ in pseudo-Americana.

Iran is full of small surprises. Women can seem downtrodden — forced to cover their hair and wear loose clothing, yet their role in society isn’t hidden. On arrival, one of the first things you notice is that the serious-looking immigration officers, holding back a turtle-paced queue of arrivals, are all women. While inequality is still pervasive, women can drive, vote and participate in most forms of social life

Other contrasts are evident. While the climate is dry and dusty, the Elburz and Zagros mountains are permanently capped with snow, and skiing, even in late April, is hugely popular with middle-class Iranians and accepted by the government as it requires wearing sufficient clothing. For the visitor, Iran is one of the cheapest places in the world to ski.

We stayed at the Ferdowsi Grand Hotel in Tehran (24 Forughi St, +98 21 6719991), named after the epic poet. With its blend of old-world furnishings and personal service it was charming and comes recommended over the bland ex-Hilton types in the north. Naming streets and areas after national heroes is an ubiquitous if unsurprising habit; more comical is the fact that the road behind the British Embassy was provocatively renamed Bobby Sands Avenue, after the notorious IRA hunger striker.

Tehran is fascinating for its lively locals, whose views on politics, arts and religion are well worth hearing. Beyond that, and some of the Shahs’ legacies — the dazzling peacock throne and the Golestan Palace — the capital won’t detain the traveller for long. Exploring the architectural and archaeological wonders of the rest of the country from Isfahan to Shiraz and Persepolis is what will, when politics loosens its stifling grip, draw back the hoards of tourists.

Alex Bigham is an Iran analyst at the Foreign Policy Centre.

http://www.spectator.co.uk/the-magazine/youve-earned-it/23066/where-to-take-the-nuclear-family.thtml

20th June 2006

The United Nations has just recently turned 60. Many of its institutions are creaking with age and it may be time for the UN to quietly retire from some of its duties. While 60-somethings may feel too young to give up everything for the pipe and slippers, this is an opportune moment for the UN to effectively work “part-time”.

The UN’s work on development is unparalleled in its reach and ability to pool resources. The UNDP and UNICEF, along with other agencies are by no means perfect, but they must continue their critical activities in famine relief, disaster assistance and longer-term development. At some point in the near future, the majority of the world’s people will live in urban not rural areas, a challenge which the World Urban Forum, which started yesterday, must address with some radical ideas. The conditions in which many live, with no access to water, electricity or sanitation will need a new focus on infrastructure assistance. This shift is one example of why, as Tony Blair said recently in a speech in America, the structures of the UN, are in desperate need of reform. They were established in a totally different era and remain largely unchanged since 1945.

The new Human Rights Council, which was inaugurated yesterday, went some way to ending the anomaly of the old Human Rights Commission, which had glossed over the human rights abuses of its members (this was brought into the spotlight when Libya took the chair despite abuses instigated by the government in Tripoli). It is a step in the right direction, and the US is wrong to say the terms of its membership are not strict enough, when China, Cuba and Pakistan can join. In the end, human rights abuses must be highlighted, and it is only through engagement, not isolation that change can occur. The new council must use its ability to suspend violators if rights abuses continue.

Along with human rights and development, the third pillar of the UN, which Kofi Annan outlined last year, is collective security. In spite of the idealism of the Charter, the UN is fundamentally ineffective when it comes to conflict prevention and peace keeping. The recent examples are all too familiar – the betrayal of Bosnia, the failure to intervene in Kosovo and the despicable lackadaisicalness which let genocide tear the heart out of Rwanda. The common answer is that the UN must intervene more often, and quicker – hence the move to the responsibility to protect and the new peace-building commission.

These are sound principles, but the lessons from Kosovo and East Timor suggest that it is regional powers, not the UN that are most effective at ending conflict, and creating a lasting peace. The UN failed to halt Milosevic’s ethnic cleansing of the Kosovans, thankfully NATO stepped in. At a recent Foreign Policy Centre meeting, Paddy Ashdown explained the need for a magnet to drive change. In the Balkans, membership of the EU, with the lure of greater financial assistance and trading incentives will be the stimulus for the long-term reform needed to end corruption, institute the rule of law and bring stability.

East Timor had been seen as one of the UN’s successes in recent times. But the 1999 massacre of policemen who were told by the UN to lay down their arms; the failure to build up a competent and experienced judicial system; and the worst looting and communal violence since the Indonesian scorched earth policy, put paid to this myth. The failure of the UN to make an effective transition put a massive strain on its humanitarian work in Dili and led to the return of Australian troops to the country. Australia, as the pre-eminent regional power shouldn’t have left in the first place, and must now stay the course – not just with troops holding the ring, but with support to establish the rule of law before any more elections, often the precursor to violence, are held.

There’s no doubt the UN needs reform. But it also needs to accept that it can’t solve all the world’s problems, in all the countries, all of the time. There are better and more effective agencies to do the tasks of peace building and peace keeping, while the UN must act quicker to give those agents a mandate. The United Nations must realise as much when to let go as when to intervene.

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/alex_bigham/2006/06/the_un_should_retire_from_its.html

1st June 2006

In the battle for hearts and minds between Washington and Iran, the US has played a tactical trump card in its offer to resume negotiations with the Islamic republic.

Breaking 27 years of silence is rightly seen as a major shift in American policy. It ends the anomaly where the only channel the US had with one of the major powers in the Gulf was the Swiss government. The clever part is that the offer is not unconditional – it is hedged with preconditions for dialogue, most notably that Iran must suspend its nuclear enrichment activities.

Washington is seemingly in a no-lose situation. They either get the uranium suspension they want, or if the Iranians refuse the offer, they can go back to the Russians and the Chinese and say they have tried to engage but that the diplomatic route is exhausted. The Americans will then be in a much stronger position to demand tough action including possible sanctions, and they may already have had a private reassurance from the Russians along those lines. The announcement yesterday was as much aimed at third parties on the UN security council as it was at the Iranians.

Both sides are obsessed with history – the US about the humiliation of the hostage taking, the Iranians about the CIA backed ousting of Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953. So why are we now seeing these tentative moves towards a diplomatic resolution? In Washington, it illustrates the ascendancy of Condi Rice over the hardline axis of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld who are tarnished by domestic scandals and the debacle of Iraq. Her vision of transformational diplomacy is flavour of the month in a White House desperate for a positive story to boost the president’s appalling personal ratings. Britain and the EU will no doubt have played a role – the announcement came just days after Tony Blair visited Washington where he held private talks on Iran with Bush. The UK favours engagement, and if any European leader could persuade President Bush toward engagement, it was his oldest and most trusted ally.

A visit to the Golestan Palace in Tehran illustrates the crucial role that mirrors play in Iran’s glittering cultural history. The moves by both parties are currently reflecting each other – the American offer yesterday is a response to the letter from President Ahmadinejad, which was the first missive from an Iranian president since ties were severed. President Bush’s initial reaction to the letter was to dismiss it as irrelevant because it didn’t mention the nuclear row. Similarly, Iran has made a first response to the US offer, rejecting it as “propaganda” and according to Iran’s foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, rejecting the precondition of a suspension of uranium enrichment.

Iran’s reaction is unsurprising – intensely proud nationalists cannot be seen to be being bribed back to the table. We should wait until the US offer has had serious consideration to see how Iran has reacted. The initial statements asserted Iran’s “natural” right to nuclear power in a way which still leaves room for manoeuvre.

While many in the west obsess over Iran’s hardline president, we should remember that it is the supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, who has the final say over all matters of national security and foreign policy. He publicly came out in favour of the letter from Ahmadinejad so seems to be predisposed towards some sort of negotiated settlement.

Deciphering Iran’s position on a particular issue on any one day is like searching through a hall of mirrors, but Iran may quietly be welcoming Washington’s offer of talks. There is a desperate need for the west to understand better the Islamic republic’s internal political structures. When I visited Iran, one official with links to the president told me that when Iran determines its foreign policy it has to go through 16 different channels to get approval, which can leave negotiating partners perplexed.

There are promising signs: despite public pronouncements, the Iranians are extremely keen to negotiate – the Foreign Policy Centre has received many offers from government figures to organise private, track two diplomacy between the west and Iran. An official from the supreme national security council, whose secretary, Ali Larijani, is a key figure in the negotiations, described the offer as good if it’s not for an unlimited time frame. Others have suggested that Iran will be prepared to suspend industrial scale production if they can keep the 164 centrifuges in Natanz. The US may not like this – but it may be necessary for Iran to save face. After all, you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to realise that 164 centrifuges will not make a nuclear bomb. The trust needed for a long-term solution will only come now the US is directly engaged.

For the moment, America has the upper hand in the battle for hearts and minds – but don’t underestimate the Iranians. They are tough, savvy negotiators, with a nationalistic president who knows how to sway public opinion. There is new hope for a peaceful solution, which we warmly welcome, but there is many a slip between cup and lip.

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/alex_bigham/2006/06/going_face_to_face.html

Nowadays, Alan Garcia is the major name in the Peruvian Aprista Party (A.P.R.A), the legendary left-wing party created by Haya de la Torre at the beginning of the 20th century. A.P.R.A., which has been considered the best-structured left-wing party in the Americas by political specialists and analysts, is presently experiencing a recovery. Its decline began at the end of Alan Garcia’s last government, who allowed the country to sink into a deep economic and political crisis, without any control on the mythical ‘Sendero Luminoso’, the Maoist faction of Abimael Guzman. The sequence of failures in the parliamentary elections showed that A.P.R.A. depended exclusively on its historical legacy for future support.

The Appearance of Humala
This year’s presidential elections were characterised by some surprising dynamics. Valentim Paniágua and Lourdes Flores started as the favourite candidates, while the image of previous administrative failure tormented Alan Garcia before the electorate. The appearance of Ollanta Humala was crucial for Garcia’s victory. Ollanta Humala was an electoral phenomenon for a number of reasons:

1. The populist-nationalist speech replaced the old “leftist” speech which attracted the votes of poorer classes.
2. The victory of Evo Morales in Bolivia brought about the image of Humala as a liberator of the Peruvian aboriginal people. An indigenous electoral success was made plausible by the victory of Morales.
3. The charisma of Hugo Chávez amongst the poorer classes benefited Humala´s political support in the beginning of the electoral process, but weakened in its final moments, because Chávez was seen to have intervened in the Peruvian elections.
4. Humala´s opponents concentrated their campaign in Lima, leaving a gap in rural areas – poorer regions that had not been approached enough by the other candidates.

Why Humala lost
These factors brought Humala to a condition of apparent electoral supremacy. However, his radical position polarised opinions about him. He was the ‘marmite candidate’ – the voters either 100% supported or rejected him. There was no halfway house. This polarisation created a niche to be fought for between Lourdes Flores, Alan Garcia and Valentim Paniágua. What set Garcia apart, in this battle to be Humala’s main opponent, was his attacks against Hugo Chávez for his intrusion in Peruvian domestic affairs. This strategy worked well, spoiling Humala´s image.

In the end of the first round, Humala won, coming just four percent above Garcia, who defeated Lourdes Flores by only one percent. Paniagua came was just behind Flores. This four way split practically guaranteed the final victory of Alan Garcia.

In the second round it was easier for Garcia to attract the votes of Lourdes Flores and Valentim Paniagua. Despite Garcia´s last government being disastrous for Peru, the idea of having Humala in charge provoked even more apprehension. Most voters of Flores and Paniagua therefore migrated to Garcia or simply annulled their votes. Humala was only able to attract the votes of those people who deeply rejected the first government of Alan Garcia. In the end of the first round, it became clear that any opponent of Humala would win the second round.

The New Government
The new government of Alan Garcia will last until 2011. It will be a government of opposition to Hugo Chávez and Morales, but it will not be similar to the Colombian social democrat, Alvaro Uribe. Populism is an intrinsic characteristic of Garcia that, allied to his economic thought, may well isolate him within the continent. Garcia supports the intervention of the state in the economics of the country, but also encourages investment. It is still not clear whether these two forces are compatible under his leadership. To govern, Garcia will have to make arrangements with other parties, including Humala´s party, which occupies the majority of the seats in Congress. Despite stating that he would dissolve Congress in case his projects were not approved, he will not dare to adopt such a radical position at the beginning of his government. If the Congress does block his projects, he will simply behave in a populist and inefficient way, letting things slide to maintain public opinion among the poor.

During Garcia´s government, we can expect that the economic growth experienced by the country will lose ground due to the lack of confidence on the part of some investors. The Free Trade Treaty that was being arranged by Alejandro Toledo should be maintained and will provide important fuel for the economy. Garcia’s regional policy will consist of verbal confrontations with Chávez, but it shouldn’t bring Peru to the position of a protagonist on the stage of South American external politics.

Ship ’em out
This May, the rising socialist star Ségolène Royal branded Jacques Chirac’s decision to end compulsory military service in 2001 “a mistake.” Troublesome teenagers should be sent to military-style academies or humanitarian work abroad “in a service supervised by the military” so as to “get to know the world and their good fortune to live in France.”

Some on the left attacked Madame Royal’s statement, while the media put it down to the fact that she is a general’s daughter, born in colonial Senegal.

All for one?
But Royal will have been all too aware that her opponents on the right are already happy to play on military memories.

Reflecting on the French “non” to the European Constitution in May 2005, the popular defense minister Michèle Alliot-Marie argued last December that “a combined initiative in the defense and security field could help revive both confidence and action in Europe.”

And in January, President Chirac surprised some of his European counterparts by arguing that France’s nuclear deterrent could be used in response to terrorist threats.

Politics is politics
Such sabre rattling is not uncommon in many European democracies as elections approach — and the right tries to show the left is soft on security.

In Britain, one of Tony Blair’s great successes of the late 1990s was to show that his Labour government could use force, and one of his failings this decade has been to be overconfident in doing so.

Learning citizenship
But, while Ségolène Royal is a vocal admirer of Blair, her appeal to the virtues of military training was not simply an effort to replicate his toughness. Indeed, she insisted, the idea was not to teach already-violent youths how to use tanks and rifles.

The goal was social and political, for compulsory service would help them to “learn citizenship.” With these words, she hinted at a new stage in a deeper and distinctively French debate between left and right on the idea of la nation armée — “the nation in arms.” That debate stretches back not to 1789 but 1793, when French citizen-armies stunned Europe with a series of decisive victories.

Guerrillas…
Almost as resonant are 1870 and 1871, when — as popular history has it — the people launched a guerrilla war against Prussian invaders, in spite of the total defeat of France’s armies and capitulation of its last emperor, Napoleon III.

Until the First World War, these dates were a significant counter-balance to any emphasis on 1789 and later popular uprisings.

…Or revolutionaries?
Frenchmen could be defined as much by their national solidarity in the face of outside threats as their internal revolutionary clashes.

The greatest test of that solidarity came in the exhausting blood-letting of Verdun.

Even after 1918, French military and political leaders still believed that the military should aim for — in the words of one general — “the ever more complete realization of the nation of arms.”

Return to glory
A few officers, such as Charles De Gaulle, argued against this orthodoxy, but when De Gaulle returned to France after its occupation by Hitler in the next world war, he ordered renewed conscription “to give France the great armies she desires.”

An appeal to military virtues was not the preserve of the generals. If the political left was often ready to appeal to the memory of 1789, it was not ready to yield 1793 to the right.

The fighting French?
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, a left-wing Left Bank philosopher, claimed that national defense could be a Communist issue, as the proletariat had often had to come to the defense of the “heritage deserted by the bourgeoisie, as in 1793, 1871 — or even in 1944.”

Yet, if France’s ideologists wanted to battle over the heritage of la nation armée, they had two problems. First, the nation was increasingly less inclined to be “in arms.”

By the late 1950s, a poll found that only 7% of respondents would consider risking their lives for France. Second, in the nuclear age, mass conscription was increasingly irrelevant. Chirac’s decision to end compulsory service came long after its usefulness had ended.

Scaling down
Since then, France’s military profile has changed markedly. In the mid-1990s, its active armed forces numbered 409,000 personnel. Today they stand at just under 255,000 and French troops have withdrawn from many of their bases across francophone Africa.

On the face of it, the changeover – now virtually certain by June at the latest – will be a marked set-back for the EU. Gone will be a man often described as “the most pro-EU British Prime Minister since Edward Heath”

In will come the man reputed to have blocked British adoption of the euro, who is known mostly in Brussels for his periodic descents on the Ecofin council, where he insensitively lectures his fellow finance ministers on how much better the British government is in running its economy.

If these impressions were the whole story it would indeed be a bleak day for the EU when Brown replaces Blair. In fact, both are caricatures, which conceal as much as they reveal.

To begin with, Blair has not been nearly such a positive influence in practice, as seemed likely when he arrived on the European scene in 1997, bursting with charm and determined to repair the bad relations which had built up during the Thatcher and Major years.

His intentions were good, but despite his large parliamentary majority and his enormous popularity, he failed to take the necessary steps to end the semi-detached status of Britain’s EU membership. Above all, he funked the opportunity of putting British entry into the euro to a referendum during his first honeymoon period, when it would have had an optimum chance of being approved.

He allowed himself to be deterred by the avalanche of lies and distortions which appeared – and still appear – in Britain’s Europhobic tabloid press. He was certainly annoyed when Gordon Brown insisted on linking British entry to a series of phoney economic tests, but did not attempt to over-rule him, and Britain now seems further away from adopting the euro than when he first became Premier over nine years ago.

Blair also profoundly disappointed most of his European allies during the discussions leading up to the adoption of the European constitutional treaty. Both during the Convention, and the later IGC, the British government’s contribution was almost entirely negative, advancing a series of ‘red lines’ to protect British veto powers over a wide range of legislative fields.

He then, quite unnecessarily, gave way to pressure from the Europhobic press to hold a referendum over the treaty, which indirectly led to the French and Netherlands governments doing the same, with the dire consequences with which we are all familiar.

Blair set out to provide a ‘bridge’ between the EU and the US. In fact, whenever there was any conflict between the two, he invariably sided with the US, with fatal consequences, most notoriously over Iraq and more recently over Lebanon. This not only destroyed the possibility of a united EU response, but also Blair’s reputation in his own country, which accounts for the desperate situation in which he now finds himself.

Would Brown – a less obviously pro-EU politician – have done any better, and will he prove a better European partner in the future? The key probably lies in the character differences between the two men. Brown lacks Blair’s ready charm, but is a more thoughtful, sober and pragmatic politician, with a strong social conscience.

Whereas Blair, like Bush, is a ‘born-again Christian’ liable to be led into sudden enthusiasms which he follows with too little regard to their likely consequences, Brown, whose father was a Presbyterian minister, has more deeply engrained beliefs, and a much more cautious approach.

He will defend perceived British interests stubbornly, but probably more realistically than Blair, and may well build up a good working relationship with other pragmatists, such as Angela Merkel (with whom he got on well during their meeting in July) and, conceivably also with Nicholas Sarkozy, or with Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the front-runner to be Prime Minister if Ségolène Royal is elected as French president.

He could thus become a central figure in a Franco-German-British triumvirate, which would have a powerful influence on the future development of Europe. Life with Brown will not be easy, but it could be more fulfilling than many Europeans now fear.

Dick Leonard is the author of A Century of Premiers: Salisbury to Blair (Palgrave-Macmillan).

Instead, the EU representatives at Helsinki, led by Finnish premier Matti Vanhanen and Commission president Jose-Manuel Barroso seem set to propose a new and much more ambitious Partnership and Co-operation Agreement.

On the trade side, the EU is seeking the establishment of a permanent joint trade and investment committee, a high level financial forum linking the European Central Bank with the Chinese central bank and a high level dialogue on industrial policy between the European Commission and the Chinese Vice-Premier responsible for industrial policy.

On the political side, the main objective is to tie China in more closely with multilateral agreements in many fields, which may have an attraction for an ultra-cautious Chinese leadership deeply alarmed by American unilateralism, and anxious to counter fears that it sees itself as a hegemonic power.

In the past, the EU has perhaps not maximised the leverage – by way of both carrots and sticks – which it could apply to the Chinese. The main carrot is the continuing Chinese appetite for access to western technology; the stick is their fear of isolation. As Stewart Fleming argued in European Voice (13-19 July), the results of the EU’s softly-softly approach with regard to trade liberalisation have been deeply disappointing.

The same could be said of the regular human rights dialogue, which China now conducts not only with the EU, but also bilaterally with some 15 western countries, including Norway, Switzerland and Australia. The Chinese have greatly improved their ability to argue their case in discussions with foreign interlocutors, but the progress made on the ground has been spasmodic and limited, as is illustrated by the recent appalling revelations about the wholesale forced donation of human organs by Falun Gong prisoners.

It is essential that whatever changes the EU adopts in its relationship with China, it should not relax its pressure over human rights. In particular, it should back to the hilt the recommendations made by Amnesty International in the devastating report it has just issued on the arms trade.

Officially China is now the eighth largest arms exporter, though the published statistics probably greatly under-estimate its actual sales. Many of these are by companies established by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) or the state police agency.

What is undeniable is that China is the only major arms exporting power that has not entered into any multilateral agreement which sets out criteria, including respect for human rights, for licensing decisions. It has continued to allow military equipment to be sent to Sudan despite well-documented and widespread killings, rapes and abductions by government-armed forces and allied military groups in Darfur.

Despite its status as a permanent member of the Security Council, it continued to supply small arms to Liberia in defiance of a UN embargo, and other recent customers include countries with such little regard for human rights as Iran, Myanmar and Pakistan, as well as armed criminal groups in South Africa and Chad.

A year ago China made a big push to try to secure the lifting of the EU’s own embargo, and almost succeeded in its object. The EU should now make it abundantly clear that there can be no question of this happening unless China puts it own house in order, and supports the demand for an international arms trade treaty which is to be debated by the UN General Assembly in September.

In China itself a lively debate is currently raging within the ruling circle about the nature of its relationship with Europe, as well on the desirability of democratising experiments, despite the strict clampdown on public discussion. It is essential that the EU should use whatever influence – and pressure – it can, to tilt the balance in favour of those wishing to open up China, both externally and internally.

Dick Leonard is the author of The Economist Guide to the European Union.