Next Sunday – 21 January – some six million Serb voters will go to the polls in the first election since the new constitution (which proclaims that Kosovo is an inalienable part of Serbia) was approved in a referendum by 53 per of Serbs last October.

For 99 per cent of non-Serbs, however, independence for Kosovo seems inevitable, the only uncertainties being when, and how. Timing could well be affected by the result of Sunday’s poll – it has already caused a delay in the presentation of the report by former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari on the final status of the territory.

He had been asked to report by the end of 2006, but in November he indicated that there was no possibility of a consensus being reached in the extensive consultations he had had, and that he would instead be making recommendations for an imposed settlement.

Immediately after the election, he will go to both Belgrade and Pristina to reveal the contents of his report before handing it to the UN ‘Contact Group’, with a view to its coming up for decision by the Security Council in March.

It does not take a genius to predict what the UN Special Envoy will propose. It will be that sovereignty should progressively be transferred to the elected government in Pristina, with strict safeguards for the Serb minority, and extensive decentralisation to elected local authorities, particularly in Serb majority areas.

There would be no partition, and no change in Kosovo’s historic borders. NATO would continue to be responsible for security, and the EU would have a greatly enhanced role, assuming many of the responsibilities currently held by UNMIK, providing greater economic and technical aid, and opening the door to eventual EU membership. Kosovo would also be admitted, in due course as a member of the UN.

All this will be deeply unwelcome to whatever government emerges from next Sunday’s election. The major question is whether it will fight the decision tooth and nail, progressively isolating itself further and further from international opinion and fostering the Serbs’ victim mentality, which Milosevic did so successfully and so disastrously during his years in power.

Or it could be one which reluctantly accepts the inevitable, and which works to bring back Serbia into the democratic and European mainstream, enabling it to have good relations with all its neighbours, including an independent Kosovo.

Serbian voters have a wide choice, with 20 party lists registering themselves with the Election Commission by the deadline of 5 January. In fact, there are three major players, and another three or four contenders for junior partner status in possible coalition governments.

According to the opinion polls, the front-runner is the Serbian Radical party (SRS), led by Dr Vojislav Seselj, currently awaiting trial as an indicted war criminal in the Hague. An ultra-nationalist party, it is credited with plus or minus 30 per cent of the votes.

A considerable way behind is the Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS), led by Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica, also nationalistic, but more moderate and more democratic. It has been overtaken in the polls by the Democratic Party (DS) of President Boris Tadic. The DS electoral list is headed by Ruzica Djindjic, the widow of former Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic, who was assassinated on 12 March 2003.

If these two parties together out-poll the nationalists, the hope is that they would come together and form a moderate coalition government, possibly with Djindjic replacing Kostunica as premier if her party is larger. They would probably need the support of two smaller parties, the Serbian Renewal Movement of Foreign Minister Vuk Draskovic and the Liberal Democrats of Cedomir Jovanovic, to be able to govern securely.

As for Seselj, he spurns co-operation with either the DS or the DSS, and is pinning his hopes on the Socialist Party of Serbia, of former President Milosevic, and other minority groups, being able to win enough seats to give him an overall majority.

A Seselj victory could well delay the acceptance of the Ahtisaari plan, with Russia being strongly pressed by the Serbian government to veto it in the Security Council. With a moderate government in power, however, the chances of it being accepted and implemented fairly quickly would be much greater.

12 January 2007

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

Perhaps the Polish government did the European Union a favour when it prevented the conclusion of an agreement with Vladimir Putin at last month’s EU-Russia summit, to begin the negotiation of a new treaty to replace the 1997 Partnership and Co-operation Agreement (PCA).

The current strained relations, which are likely to be exacerbated by the repercussions of the Litvinenko murder enquiry and the probability of a major clash with Russia over Kosovo in the New Year, suggest that this is not the optimum time to start on a major new initiative.

It might be better to wait until next summer, when the departure of Jacques Chirac and Tony Blair, following on the heels of the exits of Messrs. Schroeder and Berlusconi, may lead to a more cohesive approach on the EU side. Indeed, a case could even be made for waiting until the spring of 2008, when Mr Putin’s successor will be in charge of the Kremlin, and Russia will almost certainly have obtained entry to the WTO, which would remove the need for detailed bargaining on trade.

Little of substance will be lost by this delay, provided both sides remain of the opinion that it is in their interests to continue what co-operation there has been within the PCA, despite the disappointment that it has fallen far short of the original hopes. Although its anticipated 10-year span comes to an end in 12 months’ time, it will be extended automatically unless either side gives six months’ notice.

The Russians seem anxious – perhaps largely for prestige reasons – to negotiate a new text, which would have the status of a full-blown treaty, as soon as possible. Not every one on the EU side is so sure. Two reports from think-tanks, one based in London, the other in Brussels, argue for caution.

Katinka Barysch, of the Centre for Eurorepan Reform (CER), argues that “the EU should take its time…In the medium term a framework treaty looks like a good idea. But for the time being, the EU and Russia should focus on making existing agreements work, in particular the four ‘common spaces’ [economics, internal security, foreign policy, and research and education] and the energy dialogue”.

She quotes a Commission official as saying; “If the [already agreed] road maps were fully implemented, the EU would have a relationship with Russia that is almost unprecedented in its breadth and closeness”.

In Brussels, Michael Emerson and colleagues from the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), in their new book, The Elephant and the Bear Try Again, cast considerable doubt about whether a new treaty, which would require a long and uncertain ratification process by the European Parliament and the 27 member states, would be worth having at all.

“A far more realistic and efficient model would seem to be one of negotiating multiple sector-specific agreements, each adapted to the most appropriate timing and format”, they conclude.

Emerson notes that the EU has never felt the need to negotiate an over-arching treaty regulating its relationship with its most important trading partner – the United States.

Its rapidly developing economic relationship with India is also not governed by a treaty, but merely by a “Political Declaration on Strategic Partnership”, a two-page document, negotiated in 2003, between the “world’s two biggest democracies”, as they correctly described themselves.

In the long-term, this could possibly prove a model for a high-level agreement with Russia, Emerson argues. But now is not the time when – so far from moving closer to the EU’s democratic ways – Russia seems to be going more and more in another direction.

Good economic relations between the two entities have never been more important, with the Russians sending 60 per cent of their exports to the EU, which already depends for a fifth of its total energy consumption on Russian sources, a proportion which seems bound to grow substantially.

Both sides have a strong incentive to improve the depth and quality of their co-operation in the economic sphere. Yet an attempt at this stage to negotiate a wider agreement seems bound to raise expectations on the EU side that the Russians are unlikely to be willing or able to meet. Far better to wait, in the hope that a more auspicious occasion will eventually arrive.

8 December 2006

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

“There’s time to win the game … and oust the government too!” These may have been the words of the Fijian army’s rugby team coach at half time, when they were behind in the annual grudge match with the Fijian police rugby team.

In the end, he was wrong on the first count. The police team managed to snatch victory last Friday, by 17 points to 15 as the clouds began to gather in Fiji’s capital, Suva. The victory of the police, who support the democratic government, must have made nerves jangle in the army camp.

However, the second point was proved correct today. In a widely anticipated move, the Fijian army seized power for the fourth time in less than 20 years. Fiji is the only country in history that would think it normal to put off holding a coup for half a day while they played a rugby match. The match was made even more tense by the fact that the army and the police are on opposing sides of the coup. The victory of the police (in the rugby, at least) meant that the new army commander had to entertain the police to drinks after the match. Heaven knows what the small talk must have been like.

Commodore Frank Bainimarama is no longer just in charge of a rugby team – he has assumed the powers of a president and dismissed the elected prime minister, Laisenia Qarase, while he asks the country’s Great Council of Chiefs to organise an interim government.

Prime Minister Qarase didn’t stand a chance. He was holed up, under house arrest, with troops outside his building and at checkpoints throughout the capital. The government had seen it coming of course – they had requested troops from Australia to protect their administration, but the Australian premier John Howard had turned down the request, saying “the possibility of Australian and Fijian troops firing on each other in the streets of Suva was not a prospect that I, for a moment, thought desirable.” He did however, send three warships to be stationed off the coast of Fiji, but only in case some of the many Australian residents needed evacuating.

There have been some worrying moves since the elected government was toppled. Late on Tuesday night, armed forces entered the building of the country’s most prominent newspaper – the Fiji Times, and ordered the editors not to publish any “propaganda” against the new leadership. With their editorial freedom over, the managing director suspended publication of the newspaper.

What lies behind the latest in a succession of army takeovers? In a bizarre irony, one of the main disputes between Qarase and Bainimarama is over Fiji’s previous coup d’etat in 2000. The government is seen as being lenient on the conspirators in 2000, with the army wanting to repeal a bill that would pardon those involved. Some of them were also prominent members of Qarase’s government. The army leader has threatened to send Qarase to Nukulau, a paradise island prison, which is home to the 2000 coup leader, George Speight.

Many blame the president, Ratu Josefa Iloilo for failing to solve the dispute between the army and the government. Others go further, to suggest he was colluding with the army and had much to gain from the government being ousted. He will now be appointed by the Great Council of Chiefs to find an interim government before elections are held.

At the heart of Fiji’s political problems are the same tensions that lead to the first coup in 1987 – strife between the majority indigenous Fijians (of Polynesian descent) and ethnic minority Indians (who are descended from Indian labourers brought to the island by the British in the 19th century). The indigenous Fijians have felt cut out of politics and the economy – the 1987 rebellions were against Indian dominated governments and the economy has been dominated by Indians too, while indigenous Fijians have made up almost all of the armed forces. The roles were reversed in the recent takeover, with Qarase seen as biased in favour of the indigenous majority.

Conspiracy theorists may see one final element to the jigsaw. One of Fiji’s more infamous residents is the Australian fraudster Peter Foster (the former friend of Cherie Blair), who is in a luxury hotel in Suva awaiting a hearing on a forgery charge. Foster has switched sides to support the army, after being closely involved with the prime minister’s political party before the election.

In the long run, Fiji must cut the budget and manpower of its armed forces, which are large for such a tiny country. Not only is the army so big that it is prone to taking control of power, but it has been sent on UN peacekeeping missions in East Timor, Lebanon and even Iraq. The new government would be better placed spending the money on economic development, boosting tourism and the sugar industry as well as funding educational programmes that help bring together ethnically divided communities.

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/alex_bigham/2006/12/a_very_sporting_coup.html

If it were only a question of meeting the economic requirements, there can be no serious doubt that Turkey would be fully ready to join the European Union by 2015, or even earlier. If this were to happen, and the country had meanwhile met all the EU’s demands for political and judicial reforms, it should go a long way to counter the largely irrational fears of voters in countries, such as France and Austria, which are currently committed to hold referenda before Turkey can be admitted.

Things might still go wrong in ten years’ time, but the greater risk, in the words of Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn, is that there will be a ‘train crash’ over the next few weeks. The Finnish presidency of the Union is still pursuing, behind closed doors, its attempt to find a compromise over the Cyprus problem, which Commissioner Rehn repeated on Monday, would produce a ‘win-win’ outcome which would benefit both the EU and Turkey.

Even the Greek Cypriot government, which has consistently blocked efforts to redeem the EU commitment to open up trade with Northern Cyprus, would secure tangible benefits from the Finnish proposals. These would include the handover of Famagusta to the EU, and of the abandoned resort of Varosha to the UN, enabling Greek Cypriots to return.

The Turkish government understandably feels aggrieved by the tone of the Commission’s progress report, published on November 8, believing that it was given insufficient credit for the progress of its reforms. Rehn showed some sympathy for this on Monday, when he denied that the report had suggested that there had been any backsliding, only that the pace of reform had slackened.

Within the last week, the Turks have announced a further (9th) reform programme, including the institution of an Ombudsman and an undertaking to amend the notorious Article 301 of its constitution, which threatens free speech. Its chief negotiator, Ali Babacan, during a visit to Brussels, pledged on behalf of the government that all the EU’s reform demands would be met in full.

Questioned about the sharp fall in Turkish public support for membership, Babacan said that this reflected more a feeling that the EU did not really want Turkey as a member, rather than disillusionment about the actual benefits which membership would bring. He suggested that a more positive line from the EU, coupled with a reduction in anti-Turkish rhetoric in some member states, would soon be reflected in a rise in the opinion poll figures.

Six former Turkish Foreign Ministers – at least four of whom are known to be strongly pro-EU membership – have meanwhile made an appeal for a suspension of the negotiations until such time that there is a better atmosphere between the EU and Turkey, rather than risk a total breakdown after the European Council meeting next month.

This in itself is a highly risky proposal; it would be extremely difficult to get the negotiations going again after they had been broken off. The ex-Foreign Ministers would be better advised to use their influence on Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government to meet Turkey’s legal obligation to open its ports to Cyprus shipping, despite the actions of the Cyprus government, which has now blocked the opening of no fewer than five chapters in the negotiation.

This would give the Turks the high moral ground, and would virtually force the EU to respond in kind by putting irresistible pressure on the Cyprus government to give way. Ideally, it should accompany this with a rousing affirmation that the adhesion of this uniquely important strategic state to the European Union would be equally in the EU’s and in Turkey’s own interest. If the European Council felt able to do this at its December meeting it would indeed be a good day’s work.

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

13 November 2006

The seven judges responsible for the decision on a new counting of the votes have unanimously decided on the legitimacy of the electoral process occurred in July. With the confirmation of the victory of the former-minister of Energy of the president Vicente Fox, Felipe Calderón not only becomes the second president belonging to PAN (Accion Nacional Party), but also the president elected in the most troubled way. His official victory does not seem to be the last chapter of this novel. We can wait for an increase in the political temperature in Mexico.

In recent statements and actions, the defeated candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador (PRD) stated he will not surrender so easily. He also promises to call a general convention and to announce the creation of a parallel government in Mexico.

Unquestionable favorite during the whole campaign, Obrador has seen the possibility of becoming the first Mexican president of the Democratic Revolution Party sink. Obrador says that a general fraud occurred, especially in those states where he counted on the main popular support. Similarly to other Latin American Populists, Obrador made a good government as mayor of Mexico City. He labeled himself as the guardian of the poor and justified this denomination attracting millions of Mexicans to his famous parades and speeches. Due to this special attention to the needs of the people, Obrador started to make speeches that are typical of the Latin American left wing, in order to conquer those hesitant voters who voted in Vicente Fox in 2001, and who used the same ideas Obrador used in this campaign.

Felipe Calderón, the elected president was one of the major ministers of Vicente Fox, and acted as a counselor for general issues. His actions are opposite to Obrador´s. He defends the free initiative, the attraction of investments and uses the entrepreneurs´ language when he speaks to the people. He showed to be consistent when he presented a government plan, something that Obrador was not able to do during his campaign. This factor determined the advantage over Obrador until the end of the elections.

If there has been fraud or not, this is something that we will hardly know. After the ballot defeat, Obrador claimed the votes were recounted. According to his assessors, about 800 thousand votes have been defrauded. Outstanding numbers, since the victory of Calderón over Obrador has been of only 230 thousand votes. There are reasons to believe in certain irregularities in the Mexican electoral process. However, an irregularity so huge as the one pointed out by Obrador is very difficult to be proved.

At the end, the country loses. Philip Calderón will be installed on December the first, and up to then Obrador would have already taken his decision on the creation of a parallel government. The occupation of the main avenue in Mexico City by his supporters evidences the support he has and increases the possibility of materializing the promise of a parallel government. Obrador has also clearly stated that he will try at most to prevent a peaceful installation of Calderón in December and, if necessary, he will start a movement to dismiss him. We must know how serious are these statements, or if they derive from the heat of the emotion. In case this is confirmed, we will have a political crisis, which has never been seen before in Mexico. After achieving expressive results in the legislative elections, Obrador´s party, PRD, will make difficult the approval of projects wished by Felipe Calderón. In case of a parallel government, the things can get even worse. Obrador´s voters promise to take the streets and we fear for the most rampant acts of violence and vandalism.

Some comments can be made on the American continent. The official victory of Calderón represents a great relief for Washington. The present wave of populist governments in the continent is losing strength with Calderón´s victory. However, the internal destabilization that this victory can generate will favor populist governments in the continent. Hugo Chávez, Venezuelan president, has already demonstrated its repudiation to the “democratic fraud” in Mexico, and promised his unconditional support to Obrador. It is feared that, in case of a parallel government, Chávez can acknowledge it and impair the Mexican stability.

In case the actions of López Obrador cool down, we can expect a pragmatic government in Mexico. Calderón will continue Fox´s government, will maintain the economic growth without intervening in the economy, and will pay more attention to the social area, exactly to attract Obrador voters, who will feel abandoned. The attraction of external investment will be an important focus for the new Mexican government, and a political approximation with Washington is being planned, too.

September 2006

September 2006 will enter the annals of media history as a month kind to the United Nations press corps. In a remarkable departure from the usual pattern, there were moments of bewildering entertainment mixed in with news demonstrating decisiveness.

First, Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez enlivened the world body’s annual September summit with the claim that “the devil” George W. Bush had left its
General Assembly chamber smelling sulphurous. Next, officials had no time to give the building an airing before the UN Security Council reached an unexpectedly early consensus on South Korea’s Ban Ki Moon to succeed Kofi Annan as Secretary General.

So far, so good. Unfortunately, all the big stories coming out of New York may have obscured a deeper trend in the UN’s affairs playing out in Africa and Lebanon. At the end of September, Jan Pronk, Mr. Annan’s Special Representative in Sudan, declared that the international community should drop efforts to deploy a UN force in Darfur. This looked like a retreat in the face of Sudanese threats of a “jihad” against such a force.

But at the same time Pronk voiced his concerns, the UN’s troops in Lebanon were overseeing the conclusion of the Israeli Defence Forces’ withdrawal from the south of the country. Within the space of two months, the number of blue helmets there had more than doubled to over 5,000.

The contrast between this rapid deployment to Lebanon and the UN’s continued absence from Darfur has raised questions over whether the organisation is about to shift its focus. During Kofi Annan’s ten years as Secretary General, the UN — for good reasons — was immersed in African conflicts. The number of peacekeepers deployed there has grown by more than 1,000%.

Before the Lebanese crisis, four-fifths of its 60,000 peacekeepers were deployed on the continent. Conversely, Mr. Annan’s UN had gradually ceded its Balkan responsibilities to the EU, and shrunk the size of its military presence in the Middle East, including in Lebanon.

This focus on Africa appeared to enjoy both Western and African support. In late 2005, four of the top ten contributors of troops to UN peacekeeping operations were African countries — Ethiopia, Nigeria, Ghana and South Africa.

The United States and Europe have offered few troops, but have provided considerable funding for the African missions. The UN’s largest — and most expensive — peacekeeping mission, the nearly 18,000 personnel deployed in the Democratic Republic of Congo, cost about $1 billion last year.

In 2006, calls for the UN to enter Darfur have been led by George W. Bush. But even as he has done so, the UN has encountered mounting resistance around Africa. The Sudanese government’s refusal to countenance UN troops in Darfur has been the highest profile case, but it is far from the only one.

At the start of the year, the government of Burundi — which came to power in 2005 elections overseen by a UN mission promoting national reconciliation under the Arusha Agreement — demanded that troops be withdrawn.

Meanwhile, there have been serious protests against the UN’s mission in Côte d’Ivoire (its fourth-largest mission) — even forcing an evacuation of one of its bases. Eritrea has barred the UN from using helicopters and limited its ground patrols in the buffer zone created after its war with Ethiopia. The Security Council condemned but accepted these restrictions.

Thankfully, such efforts to roll back the UN’s influence have been opposed by many other African leaders. The African Union — which has over 7,000 peacekeepers under pressure in Darfur — has repeatedly asked the UN to relieve them.

In 2005, African and European governments combined to advocate the creation of a Peacebuilding Commission in the UN system. The main goal was to ensure that the international community would commit to the long-term recovery of some of the continent’s weakest states emerging from war.

Some of those states, such as Liberia, maintain good relations with UN forces. Burundi’s government, too, has found a modus vivendi and has now agreed to work with the Peacebuilding Commission. But to some governments, including Khartoum, international engagement still looks like a threat. Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir did not offer the UN summit any sulphur jokes, but claimed that Jewish groups wanted a “pretext through the Darfur issue to control us and to recolonise Sudan.”

For some observers, verbal attacks like these are fuelled by the fact that the United States and European powers have proved so keen on UN missions to Africa. Lakhdar Brahimi, until recently a special adviser to Kofi Annan, has warned that the UN’s global credibility is suffering because it is seen to be “heavily influenced” by Washington, and as “almost always biased in favour of the interests of Western countries — to the detriment of the developing world.”

It is thus ironic that, as fighting between Israel and Hezbollah escalated this summer, the Lebanese government insisted that any peacekeepers sent to help end the conflict should be under UN command, precisely to avoid the impression they are American stooges.

So while the UN may be accused of neo-colonialism in Africa, it is now being cast as an impartial force in the Middle East. The combination of the need to supply troops to Lebanon and frustration with Sudan has the potential to make the UN’s members question the scale of its presence in Africa.

The UN has pulled back from the continent before. Its major failures in Rwanda and Somalia caused it to retreat in the mid- 1990s. And with Kofi Annan leaving his post in December, UN watchers wonder whether African issues will receive less attention from a non-African Secretary General.

Western efforts to keep African conflicts on the agenda might only create further resistance. With tensions mounting in the Middle East and on the Korean peninsula, it may get harder to focus on Africa.

Such a shift in attention could have disastrous consequences for the continent. If the UN is too hasty to desert Annan’s African legacy, old conflicts in West Africa and the Great Lakes region are all too liable to rekindle.

That could mean a new round of state failures and mass slaughters. If the international community’s response to encountering resistance in Africa is to go elsewhere, it will find that it dragged back in soon enough.

October 2006

The first wave of seven action plans was agreed early in 2005, and covered Israel, the Palestinian territories, Ukraine, Moldova, Morocco, Tunisia and Jordan. A further wave, covering the three south Caucasian states of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, has already been negotiated, and will be formally adopted at co-operation councils with the three states in mid-November.

Negotiations are still continuing with Egypt and Lebanon, but – for obvious reasons – no talks have taken place with Belarus or Syria, nor with Libya, a potentially eligible country, which has not, however, yet signed up to the Barcelona process, an obvious first step for Mediterranean countries.

Algeria, which has just ratified its Association Agreement with the EU, may be next in line to negotiate an action plan. Further afield, the Kazakhstan government, recently expressed interest in coming on board, though its human rights record is hardly up to scratch, though distinctly better than its Uzbek and Turkmen neighbours.

The basic formula behind the action plans is that the states involved will receive increasing amounts of aid from the EU, in exchange for promoting democracy and human rights and liberalising their economies. No promise of future EU membership is involved, though it is clear that the more progress which states, which would otherwise be eligible, make under the ENP the stronger candidates they would eventually become.

So far, the results achieved have been rather uneven. The star pupils are generally considered to be Morocco and Jordan, both of which have introduced important constitutional and legal reforms and have benefited from the presence of EU advisors in a large number of fields.

Ukraine is also reckoned to have made good use of the ENP, under which it received an enhanced package of aid after the Orange Revolution. It has now held two free and fair elections, greatly increased media freedom, and –in conjunction with Moldova – helped to block off the flow of smuggling across the Transdniestrian border, and has co-operated fully in attempts to resolve this long-festering dispute.

Much remains, however, for the Ukrainians to do – in cleaning up corruption, and preparing their economy for WTO membership. It also remains to be seen whether Viktor Yanukovich’s government will show as much commitment as its predecessor in pursuing its European vocation.

As for the three Caucasian states, the Commission has only guarded hopes that they will achieve optimal results from their new association, as Benita Ferrero-Waldner, the External Relations Commissioner recently made clear in a surprisingly frank speech.

Major question marks have already developed over whether, in the absence of a pledge of future membership, the carrots and sticks involved in the ENP, and in other EU policies designed to help neighbouring states, are sufficient to induce them to take steps which they are reluctant to perform.

A case in point is Egypt which, within the past year, has signally failed to deliver on its promise of genuine multi-party elections, despite the substantial aid which it has received not only from the EU but also from the US. This is deeply disturbing, and accounts – in part – for the delay in agreeing an action plan.

All these issues are discussed in some detail by Charles Grant, Director of the Centre for European Reform, in his new pamphlet, Europe’s Blurred Boundaries. It is brimming with ideas for varying and expanding the policy, which should influence the Commission in drawing up its own recommendations.

My personal view is that the EU has not yet got the formula quite right, and probably has not made a strong enough financial commitment to optimise the contribution which the ENP could make to enlarging “the area of peace, prosperity and democracy” which the EU wishes to construct around its borders. For example, countries such as Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia, now under savage economic pressure from Russia, could well be offered compensatory payments for the losses they have suffered.

So, there is much for improvement, but enough has already been achieved to conclude that the ENP is a useful addition to the external policies of the Union, and should be further developed.

Dick Leonard is the author of The Economist Guide to the European Union.
October 2006

With events in Lebanon potentially reverting back towards the verge of civil war, the “New Middle East” that Tony Blair referred to during the summer’s conflict is beginning to take shape.

This new Middle East is increasingly being directed by powers such as Iran and Syria, while the traditional heavyweight Israel fights its own internal battles. The assassination of Pierre Gemayel, an outspoken critic of Syria, may be a sign the regime in Damascus is trying to get a foothold back in Lebanon. In addition, the announcement of a weekend summit in Tehran with the Iraqi and Syrian foreign ministers, while it should be welcomed, shows that Iran also has the initiative in the Middle East now – trying to transform their role from members of the “axis of evil” to “partners for peace”.

This new paradigm stems from changes in the region’s pre-eminent power. The results of the midterm elections in the US signalled the public’s increasing frustration at the Bush administration’s policies not just in Iraq, but also in Afghanistan and in the wider Middle East. It wasn’t just a victory for the Democrats in taking Congress, but a triumph for the realists in the Republican party.

The traditional split in international relations theory has been between idealism and realism. The idealist wing that was in pre-eminence in the aftermath of 9/11 – personified by Rumsfeld, Cheney, Bolton and others, saw Baghdad as the first staging post in a wider battle to install democracy in capitals across the region. The stars are now ascending on the realists – the new defence secretary Robert Gates, Condoleezza Rice, James Baker and others associated with George Bush Sr, supported by a wave of thinkers, such as Henry Kissinger, who argue from the right for engagement with Iran and Syria, and a “containment policy” to replace the faltering democratisation project.

On his recent trip, Tony Blair compared Afghanistan today to the Balkans in the1990s. He’s right – and the lesson from those such as Paddy Ashdown, who saw the sharp end of nation building in the Balkans, is that you can only get a lasting settlement if you get the neighbours on board. In addition, the amount of reconstruction aid that is being spent on Afghanistan is pitiful when compared to the amount spent in the Balkans. We need a genuine, not a half-hearted Marshall plan for countries like Afghanistan.

The incentive for the west to engage is obvious, with a war in Iraq which has been tacitly acknowledged as a “disaster”, but why should the Iranians help the old enemy America? A number of reasons. Firstly, they don’t want chaos on their doorstep, which could easily spill over the border affecting Arabs in south west Iran, who have little support for the ethnically Persian government in Tehran. Secondly, the Iranians crave recognition – they want to be seen as the key power in the region, and the diplomatic status of a major regional conference supported by outsiders, or some kind of permanent regional security organisation along the lines of the OSCE. Thirdly, they are genuinely worried about military action, despite the decreasing likelihood.

The difficulty is if the US keeps up the demand of the precondition of suspending uranium enrichment before a dialogue, they will need to give something in return, for the Iranians to save face. This might take the form of some kind of security guarantee that the US will not attack Iran any time soon. With the arrival of Robert Gates, there is currently a serious debate in Washington, with different messages coming out from the White House and the State Department on when and how dialogue with Iran might start.

On the nuclear issue, Iran has a choice – it can take the path of countries like Kazakhstan, South Africa, Brazil and Libya, who renounced or gave up nuclear weapons, and are to a greater or lesser extent, reaping the economic and political rewards of being part of the international community. This is compared to the most recent nuclear nation, North Korea, which is a poor and isolated international pariah.

What about the Syrians, who the British are at pains to point out, shouldn’t be lumped together with Iran? After all, you couldn’t imagine an envoy like Sir Nigel Sheinwald going to Tehran. The biggest incentive for Damascus is economic aid, which they increasingly need. The assassination of Gemayel shows they also want to regain a hegemonic role in Lebanon, which according to President Bush is out of the question. The one thing that could be offered is the return of the Golan Heights – though that is in Israel’s, not America’s power to give.

The danger of the realist strategy is that by engaging Iran, Syria and attempting a realist approach to the Middle East, that we repeat the mistakes of the 1990s of the “dual containment” strategy towards Iran and Iraq – when human rights and democracy were abused, most memorably in Saddam’s crushing of the Shia rebellion after the first Gulf War. If we agree a deal with Syria, will we jeopardise democracy in Lebanon? If we support the regime in Tehran, will they continue to suppress women and ethnic minorities?

Democracy is the long term solution to the Middle East, but it cannot be imposed, Iraq-style or it will backfire. Marrying the idealism of democratisation, with the realism of regional engagement will be the defining challenge in the most difficult area of the world.

22 November 2006

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/alex_bigham/2006/11/changing_course_in_the_new_mid.html

Links between the EU and the UN have flourished under Kofi Annan. With his tenure about to expire, Richard Gowan looks at the implications for Europe of the search for his successor

Global Britons Forum
Tuesday 11th of February, 2003 (12.30-3.30pm)
Conference rooms A and B, National Assembly for Wales, Cardiff Bay, Cardiff

Transcript

Launch of the forum by Rt. Hon. Rhodri Morgan AM

Wales to me is the ultimate paradox of a country in the devolutional context. On the one hand, its history means that Wales today enjoys huge diversity. Because of the explosive growth of its population in the first half of the 19th century, Wales developed, earlier than most other European countries, a diverse ethnicity that went side-by-side industrialisation and globalization. The economic expansion and the importance of its seaports made Wales much more like America than other parts of Europe – creating a cosmopolitan, multi-ethnic, multi-religious country much earlier than any other part of Britain and Europe. On the other hand, Wales has maintained its cultural integrity through its language. Whereas Ireland and Scotland lost their Celtic languages, Wales had the opposite experience.

If you define Britishness as being how mainstream you are relative to the rest of Britain, then industrialisation and globalisation do make Wales quite like England. English is now predominantly spoken especially by the ethnic minorities in the east of Wales. At the same time, the western part of Wales is more like the Irish Republic even though the Irish Republic has had 80 years of political independence.

I think many people, especially in London, thought that devolution would be damaging to the ethnic minorities in Wales. They thought that it would represent an ethnic purity and parental heritage which would be a disadvantage to ethnic communities in Wales. I do not think we ever want to revert back to the famous line of complacency about race relations in Wales: ‘We’re all black underground aren’t we?’ This complacent line can mean that all is well and good in race relations in Wales, which is not the case. However, the experience in Wales that derives from devolution is that we can have mixed ethnicity in a way that devolution has not caused people to become second class citizens either. Devolution for Wales is about clarity about what it is to be British.

If people think that to be British means that you are English with perhaps a bit of influence from Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland added on post-devolution, they have not understood most people’s association with being British. What devolution has done is to unpack the word ‘Britishness’ back to its proper meaning. ‘Britishness’ after devolution has accurately reflected for the first time in almost 300 years why you have to invest the word British to describe what has been assembled over centuries in a large country (England) and three small Celtic countries, one of which had had a major part in globalisation and industrialisation and the establishment of multi-ethnicity in Britain probably earlier than London and the other major trading west-coast trading ports of Liverpool and Bristol.

I am not saying that our experience of devolution has been particularly positive for ethnic communities, but it hasn’t been negative for these communities either. The reason why people suspected it would be negative was because our experience of multi-ethnicity was very unlike that of London. People’s fears of what would happen in Wales post-devolution were based on ignorance of what Wales was actually like and what the areas where multi-ethnicity has been established were like. I do not believe that multi-ethnic communities are worse off now than they were before devolution even though there are no ethnic minority representatives in a 60 seat Welsh Assembly.

Finally, I do think that people have to understand the paradox of Wales: the Celtic nature of Wales; the globalised and industrialised nature of Wales; and how this has impacted on our lengthy experience of multi-ethnicity on a par, if not longer, than any other part of Europe.

Panel discussion

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, The Foreign Policy Centre
I think that there is a danger that the devolved nations are becoming a little too complacent. As an outsider from Wales, perhaps I can say things that black and Asian people in Wales find it hard to say without spoiling a rather marvelous party.

My sense is that devolution, rather like multiculturalism, is an enormous self-loving project which needs to be questioned. I think that all societies need to take stock periodically and test whether existing cultural and political systems are keeping up with the people and their evolving habitat. Nothing is forever. Progressive ideas like devolution and multi-culturalism are appropriate for one historical moment but can decay if they become complacent in the face of further progress. I believe that this is happening across Britain today.

Policies and politics that had to be fought for to challenge the hegemony of old British power structures, or should I say English power structures, are today creating new dilemmas, injustices and exclusions. The struggles for devolution and multicultural rights were both vital in the dark days of Conservative Party rule when it seemed as if nothing could be shaken. Those battles were very important and correct. They delivered important results. It is obviously empowering to be Scottish and Welsh, Muslim, Black, Hindu, and feel as if we are present in the country. While the Welsh Assembly and the Scottish Parliament have not delivered power-sharing, the British Parliament is changing, not fast enough, but it is changing. Even television has changed beyond recognition. There are still too many problems inside institutions like the BBC, but just five years ago we did not have what today we take for granted. So there have been some developments.

But the side-effect has been that millions of people who live on this island no longer feel themselves to be British. British identity is no longer the colonial identity. Part of the struggle for ethnic minorities was to reclaim Britishness and make it theirs. The Daily Telegraph now says that chicken tikka masala is our national dish. They may be trite examples, but the ethnic minorities have changed the definition of Britishness and it saddens me that just when ethnic minorities got there, the carpet has been pulled from under our feet and new identities have emerged.

Another problem is that the people who are committed to multiculturalism have taken us down another set of dead-end roads. Certainly in the last 3 to 4 years, the politics of identity has revealed the dangers of not having enough pressure on us to think in terms of who we are in terms of our primary identity, but also in terms of the obligations to build up a sense of belonging to a greater whole. I do not think that those of us who are fighting for multiculturalism have done that enough. I am not talking in terms of David Blunkett’s ideas: ‘it is our country and you have to be like us and behave’. But I do think that there has to be certain principles and that those should apply to whether you are Welsh or Muslim.

Charlotte Williams, author of ‘Sugar and Slate’

As a starting point, I want to throw into the debate a number of apparent contradictions that the whole issue of ‘Global Britons’ poses for black and ethnic minority communities in Wales.

People like Tom Nairn, Jeremy Paxman and Andrew Marr have all invited us to consider what it means to be British, to explore the so-called ‘crisis of British identity’. It is trendy to talk about identity.

But this is not new to black and ethnic minority communities in Wales. We know who we are! We are, and have always been, Global Britons. The challenge always comes to light when we are asked the question ‘where are you from?’ to which my answer ‘Llandudno’ is never enough. ‘No, where are you really from?’ they ask ‘where were you from before you were born?’. The issues relating to identity come to us when we are young. We manage our relationships with big continents on our shoulders – continents of our ancestral heritage. At the same time, we are the shapers and the influences of new identities in our places of settlement. We are the ones that have been fundamentally redefining notions of Britishness through the politics of presence – long before the so-called ‘Break up of Britain’.

Therefore, I believe a number of contradictions arise.

Whilst it is enjoyable to talk about issues of identity, the important questions are about citizenship. The big issues for us are about redistribution, representation, security and presence. That’s what we need to be talking about – let’s keep that in focus.

You can celebrate your difference and diversity as long as you have passed all those tests of allegiance and attachment. Tebbit’s cricket test, Blunkett’s language test, marriage tests, and latterly, of course, the terrorism test since asylum seekers and refugees are now terrorists as well as scroungers. New sets of tests continue to emerge.

In Wales, we face further levels of scrutiny of our credentials before we can settle or have access to certain places. Who’s your mother? Who’s her mother? Where did they come from?

Furthermore, the test of Britishness doesn’t work in Wales because in Wales British equals English – and the claims of Britishness are seen as anti-Welsh. Welsh identity itself has been forged and strengthened in opposition to notions of Britishness and Englishness.

Yasmin’s book After Multiculturalism provides an interesting perspective, especially for us in Wales, because race in Wales has never been simply a colour issue. The colour divide has never wholly described our race relations in a society where the narratives of race cover Welsh /English language divisions, Anglo Saxon/Celtic divisions and even at times the Welsh north/south divisions.

Where do we from black and ethnic minority communities fit into these constellations? Well, we get mixed messages about belonging and we find ourselves on the front line of anti-English sentiments, caught in some strange cross -fire. Britishness and Black Britishness, therefore, has limited currency for some of us in Wales.

What has political devolution meant for us in the black and ethnic minority communities of Wales?
Well, we are now on the public policy agenda as we never have been before. Much of the apathy around race has gone.

Nonetheless, in line with the whole of Europe, we have an all white Assembly. While representation will not be resolved by the presence of one black face on the Assembly, one black face signals an important message of inclusion. Because our political clout at all levels of government and public office remains very weak the mixed message has been that the rhetoric of ‘inclusion’ has not been matched by visible representation. Where it counts, Wales is still a very closed society.

Yasmin has suggested that too often black and ethnic minority communities find themselves “dancing our own dances on the sidelines.” Up until now we have been sceptical about the National Assembly for Wales as a nationalist project and held back from interfering with the nation-building process. But things are changing. In the past we have demanded very little of Wales, but now we are knocking the doors of the corridors of power. We are participating in an unprecedented scale. But there is a price for this:
Many of us have become politically ethnicised when we were just not ‘ethnic’ before. We are politically mobilised, but at the same time, we are increasingly being forced into somewhat artificial ethnic categories.

It has made us turn on each other, fighting for the morsels of bread they throw us. We fight for the white limelight. Are we more open or more parochial? More global and internationalist or more focused on our in-house squabbling?

We are loaded with the heavy burden of consultation to communities that just do not have that capacity.

We are challenging the construction of Welsh national identity. We are forcing the powers to engage with civil as opposed to ethnic national identity as our votes become more important to them.

At the same time, few people from black and ethnic minorities feel sufficiently a sense of inclusion to confidently claim Welsh identity. And that brings us back to dominant notions of who is or is not ‘proper Welsh’ and how we all contribute to building exclusive versions of Welsh identity. It also relates to claims of place, space and territory – and the distinct geographical boundary of what is considered ‘black Wales’ ie: a very small part of Cardiff.

Also, I have argued elsewhere that dialogues on national identity rarely come together – the Welsh speaking communities, the black communities, the Welsh-English and the English-Welsh are having vital conversations, but rarely do we have these together to really debate the fact that there are ‘many ways of being Welsh’ which brings consensus, as well as conflicts within our national imagining.

What I am arguing is that in debates about national identity, globalisation etc., we receive a number of contradictory messages. Progressive politics does not necessarily lead to a participatory culture or to a society that is truly multicultural. I believe, we are yet to really test the limits of ‘inclusion’.

Professor Kevin Morgan, Cardiff University

If Britishness is worth defending, then it needs to be reinvented and understood as an expression of multiple identities in which cultural diversity coexists with a common sense of citizenship. This is a far cry from the traditional definitions of Britishness of the last 100 years. What was at the heart of that definition was an Anglo-centric idea of identity which is heavily biased towards southern England and is mono-cultural.

An excellent example of Britishness as an expression of multiple identities is the revisionist history of our country by Norman Davis. Davis gives the concept of multiple-identity a human face. He dedicates his book to his grandfather who was English by birth, Welsh by conviction, Lancasterian by choice and British by chance. This light-hearted example shows that all of us subscribe to a multiple notion of identity, even if we are not aware of it.

In regards to devolution, the most important thing to remember is that it is not necessarily progressive or regressive. It depends on what it does on its social and political agenda. Consider Berlusconi’s Italy where it is anything but progressive.

In Wales, we have to ask whether devolution has in any way strengthened the multicultural identities within Wales itself? To my knowledge, it has not. Although it may at some point in the future.

This question also seems to presuppose that it is a vibrant force in the lives of the people of Wales. But it is not. Devolution is a minority sport [sic] for those people who work with the Assembly. Those people know that devolution is a highly significant institutional innovation and a major inroad into the centralised, London-based British state. However, for the rest of the people in Wales, the Assembly is irrelevant. Only 25% of the eligible electorate voted for it. I am hoping, for the Assembly’s sake, that the turnout in the May assembly elections is above 40%. Devolution needs to become more relevant to the people, if we want to embed it in the politics of Wales today.

Has devolution raised national self-confidence, regardless of the identities we have? I think that it will in time, but that the answer today is no. What is my evidence for this? I have not done any polling. I simply rely on my own experience. Just notice the near national apoplexy which is induced in our national debate when Ann Robinson makes a cruel and flippant comment, or when David Blunkett makes a silly remark. Welsh self-confidence is a fragile flower and it will remain so until the Assembly can engage more clearly.

Finally, there is an external dimension to identity. How do others perceive us? The British Council wrote a report a couple of years ago called ‘Through other’s eyes.’ This report asked an overseas panel: ‘what comes to mind about the identities of Scotland?’ The answers included: Kilts, whiskey and bag-pipes. The point is that these are all indigenous aspects of Scottish life. The report then asked: ‘what comes to mind about the identities of Wales?’ Answers included: Princess Diana, The Prince of Wales and the Royal Family. So people still retain these images of Wales long after we have changed key aspects of our identity. Our national self-confidence remains incredibly fragile despite the existence of the Welsh Assembly. It will remain so until the Assembly can persuade more people that devolution has made a difference.

Merryl Wyn Davies, co-author of ‘Why do People Hate America?’

I would like to pose the question: What is identity for?

I believe identity is rooted in culture, and in Wales that is more than just a sociological truism. It was cultural activism that brought the Welsh Assembly into existence. Identity is a repertoire, it cannot be reduced to one ‘correct’ way of being Welsh, British, Muslim, Hindu or anything else. It is a repertoire of ideas, of shared but invested values, experiences and history. In this context, identity is our passport to understanding others.

I come from Merthyr Tydfil. When I was at school, we had to study not only Welsh for two years, but also Welsh history. In Welsh history class, we were taught the secret history of Merthyr Tydfil. This taught us how a town that was the world’s largest producer of iron and steel could be invisible and unmentioned in every economic history textbook written about Britain.

There are many other secret histories. A globalised world is full of secret histories and secret cultural performance that nobody knows about, are not shared and are soundless. What do people in Britain know about what happens in Wembley on Diwali, or in Southall on Guru Nanak’s birthday, or in Regent’s Park during Eid? The things that we know as our identity are the building blocks with which we connect to other people’s histories. That to me is what identity is for.

A lot of the ways that we discuss the awful traumas of Welshness or Britishness are far too reductive and small-scale for the discussion about what identity is for. We need to find the sources in our own history and experience that allow us to administer, manage and operate a globalised world for human betterment. If we are unable to find the sources and meaning of this in our own identity, we end up as globalised youngsters and victims of consumer culture who complain ‘I wish I had a culture – I wish I had something to believe in.’ That is the real dimension of what the identity debate is missing.

Lynne Williams, chairperson of Cardiff 2008 European City of Culture bid
How have globalisation and devolution impacted the local identity in Cardiff and is this part of a new cultural awakening?

As I began to put together the bid for Cardiff 2008, I went to diverse parts of the city to ask questions. I listened to the locals about what it meant to them to live in Cardiff, about their culture, whether they felt included in the city’s cultural agenda and whether Cardiff deserved to play a leading role in Europe. I also listened to what their aspirations were for themselves, their city and their nation. What I found was an acknowledgement that they felt proper Welsh and proper British and certainly Cardivian. They recognised that they now defined themselves as belonging to a place where their aspirations could be met and where they could make a positive contribution to their community, as well as by their ethnic origin. It appeared that identity was bound up in choice – it was about choosing to work, live and play in a city. It was about a sense of place. Part of the Cardiff 2008 bid was a collection of verses that people in Cardiff had written. One simple, but moving piece was written by a German: ‘Here in Cardiff I am German. Back in Germany we were Jews. Here though, no one called us names, here in Cardiff we were welcome.’

As the bidding process progressed, I got the sense that Cardiff has always been an intensely international city – celebrating historic ties with the Celtic countries, developing economic and cultural connections with countries right across the globe, and especially since devolution, redefining relationships with the cities and regions of England and of Europe. As a port, Cardiff linked Wales to the world. It attracted droves of people, goods, cultures. Ship came to Cardiff from all over the world filled with stone and ballast with which to construct the city. The people who came with the ships made an equally significant contribution to the city and those that left with the ships created a Welsh diaspora across the world. The industrial and trade links forged throughout the word still endure. Cultural links between mining communities in Wales and Poland, Australia and South Africa remain important. Long-standing Yemeni and Somali communities in Cardiff have enriched the culture immeasurably. Cardiff and Wales have a long tradition of inclusiveness. This means that they are better able to handle the challenges of today’s world than people from many other parts of Britain. However, there is still much to do and we face future challenges.

If we want a definition of Britishness and Welshness that truly takes on board the issues of diversity, migration and globalisation, then we need a mechanism to drive change, to educate, to develop relationships, to increase tolerance and to reduce the fear of the unknown. I believe that the greatest driver for this type of change lies within a cultural agenda. By culture, I mean the activities that help to define our way of life, how we express ourselves, how we choose to spend our leisure time, how we explore our different notions of creativity. The arts, for example, play a vital role in enabling us to express our deepest feelings. A common language enables us to express feelings of loss, anger and joy. The arts provide a focal point around which we share and dispute meanings. They function as a medium of exchange and give us different ways of viewing the world. The arts use metaphor to draw out similarity between difference.

There is a growing cultural awakening in Cardiff and a recognition that the city’s diverse communities are playing an important role. There are many projects that Cardiff has done to improve the participation of minority communities in the city and beyond, creating a shared sense on ownership of the bidding process. There is a celebration of the city throughout Wales and the multi-cultural nature of the city puts it on the European map.

Question and answer session

Q. Daniel Boucher, EA Wales
It was once said that we cannot know where we are or where we are going until we know where we have been. Whilst we are talking about how to create tolerant societies, one of the interesting things for me, representing churches, is the way that theology has been very important in shaping Wales’ internationalism.

Merryl Wyn Davies:
Religion is the core of culture. Cultural identity without a moral compass is a no-place identity. Inter-faith dialogue is very important in trying to articulate ways of understanding that which is common and analogous between difference churches. It allows us to negotiate what is our vision of a better society.

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown:
When the Ugandan Asian refugees came to Britain in 1972, many said that Wales was a much better society than England because they go to Church and they don’t drink.

Q. Dr Rita Austin.
Did you know that you are in one of 950 electoral wards with over 39% of the population being minority ethnic? Do you know that there are only 75 electoral wards in the whole of Wales where there is no black vote? Ethnic minorities live in every corner of Wales. When people talk about diversity in Wales they very often talk about Welsh and non-Welsh speakers, about the north and the south, the east and the west of the country, the urban and the rural. When ethnic minorities talk about diversity in Wales, we talk about something different. So can we have some acknowledgement of multiculturalism in Wales that goes beyond sarees, samosas and steam baths?

David Williams:
I believe that I have heard the First Minister actually say what you are calling for: that Wales is a multicultural country.

Kevin Morgan:
I agree with all of Rita’s comments. I am surprised that Rhodri has not got up in some venue and said that Wales is a multi-cultural society because I know personally that he believes in this. If he has not said this, he should.

Q. Neeta Baicher, Barnardos.
What is the panel’s view of immigrants wanting to maintain their own culture within the British culture?

Charlotte Williams:
It is vital and necessary that immigrants retain their own culture. We know who we are, and it is through recognising and preserving our own culture that we make Britain much more vital. However, we do not want sarees, samosas and steam baths as the only things that are preserving ethnic minority cultures. Political power and representation is needed.

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown:
I do not believe in the idea that you can hold onto your culture and still be British. The moment you leave your homeland, you change, the country you are going to changes, and the country that you are leaving changes. Part of the problem of this particular model is that someone powerful within families or communities decides what the culture is. This means that young people do not have a voice in deciding what their culture has become, often the women are forced to collude in a false image of what their culture should be. This is dangerous in respect to individuality. I do not want certain parts of my culture respected at all. I think they are deeply harmful and should be rejected.

Merryl Wyn Davies:
Yasmin, think about what you have just said and where you have said it. The continuity of Welsh culture is what brought this country into being. Its sense of marginality in regards to British identity is actually vital to the historical experience of the majority of Welsh people.

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown:
But that does not mean that we have to glorify Welsh culture at all.

Merryl Wyn Davies:
Identity and culture are not the same thing. They are a range of interpretations and no one interpretation is right.

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown:
Well, I hope that Wales does not develop this old sense of multiculturalism because some of that is based on this false idea of culture, which is what I am challenging. My multiculturalism has never been about ethnic minorities. I have never said multiculturalism is only about ethnic minorities. That would be ridiculous. Everybody has a culture and everybody’s culture is changing. I have always resented the idea that multiculturalism was a euphemism for being black. So I am totally inclusive in my narrative on multiculturalism and I do not think that any culture should be exempt.

Yvette Vaughan-Jones:
The point about globalisation which is deeply worrying and needs to be debated is what criteria do we use to evaluate culture? What are the tools with which we look at critically, the good, the excellent, the deeply disturbing pieces. Some elements of culture are deeply distressing and ought to be questioned. Other elements need to be put into context.

About 5 years ago, a piece of Welsh theatre was put on in the Royal Court in London. The reviews were: ‘rabbit, rabbit, rabbit – the Welsh are back.’ This was deeply offensive. It was racially stereotypical and would have been unthinkable if it had been describing ethnic minorities in Britain. Nevertheless, it was also very interesting because the piece of work was excellent by any kind of cultural assessment. However, it was not mainstream, fashionable, metropolitan London work. It was wordy, it came from a different root and was saying different things; but it was judged by a certain set of criteria. On the other hand, I saw a piece of Cuban theatre which was deeply disturbing in terms of marginalising women. So how do we judge those pieces of theatre?

Q. Naz Mallik, All Wales Ethnic Minority Association.
In terms of a cultural sense of belonging, it is important for all us to know where we come from, so we can know where we are going. Someone earlier said: ‘How can we know where we want to go?’ In the sense of belonging, it is the contribution that we make that allows us to understand where we belong.

Q. Name not given.
When does one move from being an ethnic minority, to being British or Welsh? Merryl spoke earlier about secret histories. There are some histories that are more secret than others. For example, we never hear about the involvement of Caribbean and black soldiers in World War II, yet if you look at the war memorial in Cardiff, you will see Muslim names and Caribbean names.

You also mentioned some Muslim festivals, but nobody mentioned Afro-Caribbean festivals or culture. The First Minister said that the Welsh Assembly does not make anyone a second-class citizen, but it has made me feel like a second-class citizen. I hear very little about my heritage, Afro-Caribbean heritage. I feel sometimes in Wales that there is a hierarchy, especially in the minds of some people in the Welsh Assembly, when they are looking at different groups – some rate higher than others. So I shall go back to my original question: when do we become Welsh or British citizens?

Q. Penny Evans, Student, The Open University
My experience living in Malaysia and Northern Ireland with a Catholic father a mother who was the daughter of an Orangeman, meant that I have always been an outsider. My sense of identity is as an individual.

Q. Marco Gil-Cervantes.
I have always had a problem with Britishness and Englishness. It has never been something I have wanted to be included in. A danger for devolution is that instead of me not wanting to be British, I could end up not wanting to be Welsh. There is a danger that devolution does not take on board difference. This is also a challenge for Cardiff 2008, although what I have seen so far has been positive.

Q. Name not given
I worry that with the impending war, Muslims in Britain, such as myself, will be branded as terrorists and will be less accepted in this society.

Findings of the group exercises
School pupil’s group.
Wales should pay more attention to the student’s views on cultural issues such as Cardiff 2008 because we are the future of Wales. The First Minister should listen to pupil’s views more often and come and visit our school.

Identity, social justice, accountability group
It is very important that people are able to choose what labels they would like to be identified with. Too often we put people in boxes: we say this is a black woman or an Asian man rather than allowing people to identify themselves, for example as Welsh or as British. This applies not only in terms of race, but also in terms of sexuality and gender.

In terms of social justice, we discussed the discrimination faced by some groups. We need to look at where discrimination exists and address this issue. Funding is required to provide the services to bring people up to equal levels of social justice.

Individual liberty group
A few members of the group felt that personal freedoms were less widespread than is often assumed, especially by policy-makers. Individuals are often constrained by norms and expectations such as gender and dress in western cultures. This often affects the ability of people to express themselves freely and to act in an autonomous way.

There is also an inherent conflict between collective and individual rights. In the west, human rights are based on the concept of individuality. Whereas, in many instances, today’s dialogue has been, for example, regarding the rights of the Welsh people to speak the Welsh language.

There is also a lack of resources. This means that we have to value some forms of personal autonomy more than others, because there aren’t enough resources to police every personal liberty. So there is a conflict between protecting individual rights and resources.

There also needs to be power sharing without exploitation. The idea exists that to gain power, you have to give something up, whether that is personal autonomy or cultural identity. It shouldn’t necessarily be a win-lose situation, it should be ideally a win-win situation.

Histories Group
We focused on the preservation of local history as identified by people, stories, memories, ownership of history by local people for example, buildings and memorials. We also need to make hidden histories part of the national curriculum so that everyone knows about them. This is important in connecting different communities. The old Irish community in Cardiff is an example of a hidden history. Many of these people came to Cardiff during the potato famine and they worked in the docks. However, the council demolished the area in which this community lived and there was nothing left to remind people that there used to be an Irish community there. However, money has been raised and work is soon to start on a memorial gardens to preserve the history of that community. When history is not preserved, a lot of the blame falls on the shoulders of the local councils.

Media Group
The Media has a very important role to play. It decides who are the legitimate spokespeople and what the angle on a story is. This is therefore incredibly powerful in capping the news. BBC Wales has two distinct characteristics: it is white and it is young. This is important firstly, because institutions such as the BBC often have institutional memory loss: they forget issues, even ones which occurred as recently as the early 1990s. The BBC’s news program, BBC Wales is the single most important media source in Wales. It gets the highest ratings: almost 400,000 people watch it on a daily basis. And this is a program where young journalists produce the news, a young production team manages the process and it is a news program designed by the young for an elderly and middle-aged audience. There is a big issues about the role of media in the way that devolution stories are decided. These issues need to be challenged. Whenever any of us feel that our community has been slighted we should take it seriously. A case in point is the use of the phrase ‘to Welsh’ for example. To Welsh on a deal means to cheat on a deal. We have managed to stop this phrase being used. That is a successful example of challenging the media.

Art and culture group
Everybody should have the chance to express their identities, create their own cultures and have the ability to that without impediment. People also need a space for debate and critical analysis; otherwise, change will not occur.

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown:
A report will be published next month bringing together all the Global Britons seminars that have been conducted around the country over the last couple of years. One of the questions that the report will address is whether we are able to come up with a version of Britishness that we can all feel comfortable with and which is open, changing and innovative.