EUOBSERVER / STRASBOURG - Swedish Prime Minister Frederik Reinfeldt has said the EU should outline a list of co-chairing tasks for leaders of future presidency countries after the new post of EU president is established.

Speaking to journalists after his address to the European Parliament on Tuesday (19 February), the Mr Reinfeldt suggested that if there is no role for EU leaders in the future, it could have a negative impact on their engagement with the bloc's agenda.

The Czech Republic and Sweden are the two countries which are due to chair the EU in 2009 - just as the new Lisbon treaty is supposed to come into force.

Under the new treaty, the bloc is to shift from a rotating six-month presidency to a mixed system of a permanent EU president coordinating top level debates at European level and ministerial sessions chaired by ministers from presidency countries.

Formal ratification of the EU treaty in Germany may be delayed, meaning the bloc's biggest member state would not sign off the treaty in time for it to come into force across all member states at the beginning of 2009 as planned.

According to a report in German daily Die Welt, politicians from the Left Party as well as Peter Gauweiler, a centre-right politician from one of governing parties -the CSU - are examining the text of the EU treaty to see if they can bring a case before the country's constitutional court.

Their move could mean that the final formal step of ratification is delayed.

German MPs are widely expected to approve the treaty when it comes before parliament in May.

However, the text then needs to be signed off by the country's president, Horst Kohler.

If Mr Gauweiler has put a case before the court, Mr Kohler will then have to decide whether to go ahead and sign off the treaty anyway or wait for the court to make its case.

BERLIN: During the highly secretive Soviet era, Kremlinology became an art form.

Whenever there was a hint of power struggle within the Communist leadership, diplomats and journalists would scrutinize public events to see who was standing closest to the leader or even more important, who was standing in for him in case of illness or death.

Kremlinology receded during the 1990s when the Soviet Union collapsed and corrupt oligarchs replaced party apparatchiks. But under President Vladimir Putin, a former KGB officer who bows out as head of state next month to make way for his protégé, Dmitri Medvedev, Kremlinology has come back into its own.

During his nine years in power, the often inscrutable Putin kept the various factions inside the Kremlin under control, playing one off against the other and distributing favors, mostly by parceling out jobs at powerful state-owned companies.

But now, having chosen Medvedev to succeed him, Putin has unleashed a power struggle inside the Kremlin that involves the direction of the economy and, by implication, the political future of the groups he has promoted.

KOSOVSKA MITROVICA, Kosovo: NATO peacekeepers reopened two demolished border checkpoints between Serbia and northern Kosovo Wednesday as thousands of Serbs protested Kosovo's independence.

For three days, Kosovo's Serbs have shown their anger over Sunday's declaration of independence by the ethnic Albanian leadership, destroying U.N. and NATO property, setting off small bombs and staging noisy rallies.

Chanting "We won't give up Kosovo," some 3,000 demonstrators marched to a bridge in the tense Serb stronghold of Kosovska Mitrovica dividing the two communities. U.N. policemen sealed off the bridge and NATO helicopters hovered overhead.

Protesters expressed their anger over the swift recognition of Kosovo's independence by world powers including the United States, France, Britain -- and now Germany. Some carried the flag of Spain, one EU nation that has refused to recognize Kosovo for fear it will encourage its own pro-independence movements.

Thousands of foreigners who want to marry a British person and move to this country will have to take an English language test, the Prime Minister said today in a surprise announcement that appeared to pre-empt a government consultation.

Gordon Brown said that the new test would help to prevent foreign brides being exploited.

Mr Brown made the announcement only five hours after a Home Office Green Paper on overhauling citizenship rules said that consultations on English tests for foreign brides were still continuing.

The Prime Minister said in a speech in north London:"We will introduce a new English language requirement for those applying for a marriage visa and planning to settle in the UK - both as part of our determination that everyone who comes here to live should be able to speak English and to make sure that they cannot be exploited."

PARIS: Steelworkers of the German union IG Metall won a 5.2 percent pay increase Wednesday in a deal that could set the tone for a season of wage negotiations and complicate the European Central Bank's job of balancing inflationary pressures and growth concerns.

Oliver Burkhard, the IG Metall leader in the northwestern state of North Rhine-Westphalia, called it the best result in 15 years, and said it was only possible because of the union's willingness to strike.

Behind the headline figure, though, the deal underscores how difficult it has become for European unions to obtain wage increases that keep pace with prices. With food and energy costs pushing inflation in the euro zone to 3.2 percent last month, the central bank chief, Jean-Claude Trichet, and his colleagues are worried that too-high wage deals would only aggravate the problem. The bank has threatened to respond by raising interest rates to get inflation down to its target of under 2 percent. But economists on the Continent are now cutting their growth forecasts in the face of a slowdown in the United States, and they expect the ECB to cut interest rates later this year, according to a Reuters survey Tuesday.

After a long period of "wage moderation," momentum would seem to be with the unions now. The number of Germans working is at record levels, while the unemployment rate is the lowest in nearly 15 years. IG Metall, the biggest union, has declared 2008 a "mega wage year."

British Gas, the country's biggest energy supplier, is expected to announce a 500 per cent rise in profits today, fuelling outrage among consumer groups which claim the public is being ripped off by the industry.

Centrica, the parent company of British Gas, will tell the Stock Exchange that the BG retail arm, which receives up to five times as many complaints as its rivals, made almost £600m profit in 2007.

Most of the money was made between January and March, when the wholesale price of gas plunged as a result of unusually mild weather and a new gas pipeline from Norway.

During those three months, BG's bosses kept prices high, earning what one analyst has described as "absolutely extraordinary" profits.

Yesterday, there were fresh calls for an official inquiry into whether the "Big Six" energy companies have been profiteering and plunging low earners into choosing whether they eat or heat their homes.

Britain is experiencing the worst "brain drain" of any country as highly qualified professionals settle abroad, an authoritative international study showed yesterday.

Your view: How can we halt the brain drain?

Record numbers of Britons are leaving - many of them doctors, teachers and engineers - in the biggest exodus for almost 50 years.

There are now 3.247 million British-born people living abroad, of whom more than 1.1 million are highly-skilled university graduates, say the researchers.

More than three quarters of these professionals have settled abroad for more than 10 years, according to the study by the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

No other nation is losing so many qualified people, it points out. Britain has now lost more than one in 10 of its most skilled citizens, while overall only Mexico has had more people emigrate.

Chancellor Angela Merkel demanded greater insight into German investments in the tiny Alpine principality during a Berlin visit by Liechtenstein's Prime Minister Otmar Hasler, amid an ever-widening tax evasion scandal.

Chancellor Merkel, speaking at a joint news conference after talks on Wednesday, Feb. 20, with Liechtenstein's Prime Minister Otmar Hasler in Berlin, said the meeting was "constructive" and stressed that she not given the principality any ultimatums, but said she expected action.

 

"Time is of the essence," Merkel said. "The faster action is taken, the better the basis for good relations."

 

However, the chancellor criticized Liechtenstein's banking secrecy and said she expected an agreement giving Berlin insight into German investments in the Alpine tax haven.

 

"What is possible with the United States should be possible with the European Union," Merkel told reporters. 

The European Parliament on Wednesday voted overwhelmingly in favor of the Lisbon Treaty, which reforms the European Union's institutions. There were, however, some protests from Euroskeptics demanding referenda.

Parliamentarians endorsed the treaty by 525-115 with 29 abstentions. European Commission Vice President Margot Wallstrom told lawmakers that the agreement signed by heads of state and government in the Portuguese capital last December "strengthens Europe's democratic legitimacy".

All 27 EU member states must individually ratify the wide-ranging text for it to come into effect by next year, as scheduled. But only Ireland is constitutionally bound to put it to a plebiscite. The governments of France, Hungary, Malta, Romania and Slovenia have already approved the document on behalf of their citizens.

Euroskeptics accuse the EU leaders of refusing to give citizens a say on a text that is practically identical to the draft European consitution already rejected by French and Dutch voters in referenda in 2005.

The French government is working to contain a wave of factory strikes by private-sector workers not normally known for taking to the barricades, including ice-cream makers, supermarket staff, hairdressers and L'Oréal employees.

Factory staff have taken increasingly hardline measures, with some holding their managers hostage for days over plant closures and job cuts.

This week the tyre giant Michelin continued talks over the closure of a plant in Toul, eastern France, after a government-appointed mediator secured the release of two managers whom workers had locked in a room for three days. It follows an incident last month when workers outraged at planned job cuts at the Miko ice-cream factory in Saint-Dizier locked up their British manager, Prakash Patel.

This week, staff at a Ford plant near Bordeaux blockaded their factory and L'Oréal cosmetics staff took to the streets under the banner "because we're worth it", asking for pay rises after their company's good financial results.

Unions from plants making products including skis, glass and steel also raised the spectre of job cuts and closures. One logistics firm in the Landes caused controversy yesterday by offering staff €1,000 (£756) if they promised not to strike. Around half accepted, but unions denounced the sweeteners as anti-democratic.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - An alternative to the European Commission's plan to liberalise the EU's energy sector put forward by eight member states is running into difficulty, with Brussels questioning both the content and legal aspects of the initiative.

The proposal was formally handed to the commission and the Slovenian EU presidency at the end of January, with the backing of Austria, Bulgaria, Greece, Germany, France, Latvia, Luxembourg and Slovakia.

Dubbed the third alternative, it is looking for a different way to achieve the commission's aim of separating energy companies' production and supply wings.

Currently, it is being dealt with in the so-called working group for energy.

During the latest discussion, the commission said that the member states' proposal did not meet criteria outlined by the EU leaders summit in March last year, sources told EUobserver.

A leading Iranian exiled opposition group claimed on Wednesday (20 February) it has evidence that the Iranian government is still engaged in the development of nuclear weapons.

"The Iranian regime is undoubtedly developing the nuclear bomb," said Mohammad Mohaddessin, the chairperson of the foreign affairs committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) at a Brussels press conference.

After offering details of what they claim is an ongoing nuclear weapons programme, including satellite photographs of two previously uncovered sites, Mr Mohaddessin then lashed out at European policy toward Iran, accusing the EU of appeasement.

Referring to the "huge trade" between Europe and Iran, Mr Mohaddessin said: "The EU is trying to achieve security through appeasing the Iranian regime."

British Iraq Dossier Surfaces, Without Crucial Weapons Claim - New York Times

An early version of a British dossier of prewar intelligence on Iraq did not include a claim about unconventional weapons that became crucial to Prime Minister Tony Blair's case for war, the newly published document showed Monday.

The document, from 2002, says Saddam Hussein's government acquired uranium and had equipment necessary for chemical weapons, but it does not include a claim that Iraq could launch chemical or biological weapons within 45 minutes of an order to use them. That statement, later discredited, became central to Mr. Blair's case for supporting the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Critics of his policy contend that the 45-minute claim was inserted into later drafts of the document on the orders of Mr. Blair's press advisers, who were seeking to strengthen the case for invasion -- an accusation the government has strongly denied.

Foreign Secretary David Miliband, who published the intelligence document on Monday after a request filed under freedom of information laws, said the early draft -- produced by John Williams, then the chief of the Foreign Office press office -- was not used as the basis for later documents, drafted by the Joint Intelligence Committee.

Revealed: the first draft of dossier that took Britain to war - UK Politics, UK - Independent.co.uk

Fresh evidence that the Iraq weapons dossier was "sexed up" emerged as the Government finally published the secret first draft of the document.

As expected, the earliest version of the document did not include the now notorious claim that Saddam Hussein could launch weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes of an order to do so.

The first draft made a series of lurid claims about the extent and danger of the Iraqi president's weapons arsenal. But those were expressed in even stronger terms by September 2002, when the official dossier on which Tony Blair based the case for war was published.

Ministers had fought a three-year battle to stop the confidential initial draft from being released, but last month lost an appeal against a ruling that it should be disclosed under the Freedom of Information Act.

Iraq weapons dossier draft reveals role of 'spin doctor' | Politics | The Guardian

Fresh evidence that a senior government press officer was closely involved in drawing up the government's discredited Iraq weapons dossier, despite official denials, was revealed yesterday.

A document the Foreign Office tried to suppress shows that John Williams, its director of communications at the time, had access to secret intelligence as he prepared an early draft in 2002.

The document suggests that Williams, a former Sunday Mirror political editor, used the same sources as the Joint Intelligence Committee, chaired by Sir John Scarlett, which produced the government's final dossier. Though there are striking similarities, Williams's draft does not contain the claim that Iraq could launch a chemical warfare weapon in 45 minutes - a claim central to the prime minister's case for war.

The 45-minute claim was made later, and subsequently withdrawn.

The FO fought to suppress the Williams draft. The information tribunal ordered its release, observing that it may have played a bigger role in influencing the dossier than previously supposed.

BBC NEWS | UK | UK Politics | How significant is early WMD draft?

Those who have sought access to the 30-page John Williams draft dossier have long argued that its existence and contents would show that so-called spin doctors were more heavily involved in the process of drawing up the final September dossier than the government has previously admitted.

In a statement released with the draft, the Foreign Secretary David Miliband said that the John Williams document was not commissioned as part of the formal drafting process and was not used as the basis for the dossier the government subsequently published.

That dossier, the government argues, was begun later in September under the control of John Scarlett, then chair of the Joint Intelligence Committee.

It was, it has always been maintained, the product of a fresh start rather than a reworking of previous drafts.

FT.com / Home UK / UK - Renewed calls for Iraq war probe

Opposition parties renewed calls for an inquiry into the origins of the Iraq war yesterday as the government published a contentious early draft of the dossier on Iraq's alleged weapons programmes.

Report: U.K. gov't hid reference to Israel on Iraq weapons dossier - Haaretz - Israel News

The British newspaper The Guardian reported Thursday that the Foreign Office in London had successfully managed to conceal a reference to Israel in a September 2002 document on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, fearing harm to bilateral ties.

The Guardian says that the word "Israel" was handwritten next to a statement in the "now discredited" dossier which said that "no other country [apart from Iraq] has flouted the United Nations' authority so brazenly in pursuit of weapons of mass destruction."

According to The Guardian, "a senior Foreign Office official" says that the move was aimed at preventing any damage to relations between Israel and the United Kingdom.

New Statesman - It's official: Blair's government set out to deceive us about Iraq

In July 2003, in the week following the death of David Kelly, a reader contacted the New Statesman and suggested that the media were missing the obvious. The Commons foreign affairs committee had just cleared the government of "sexing up" the September 2002 dossier on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction - a claim, first made by Andrew Gilligan on the BBC's Today programme, for which Dr Kelly may or may not have been the source.

Our caller pointed out that although the Commons committee had said it was satisfied the "first" draft dossier, produced on 10 September for a meeting of the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), was the unspun work of intelligence, it had missed the true significance of a meeting the day before, chaired by Alastair Campbell.

Our caller was Chris Ames, whose name will for ever be etched on the memory of all those in government, particularly in the Foreign Office, who have resisted making public what has become known as the Williams draft (after John Williams, the Foreign Office press officer who wrote it). Using the Freedom of Information Act, Ames has doggedly pursued the evidence that he believed would show that the September dossier was the work not of intelligence experts, but of spin doctors whose intention was to "sex up" the known intelligence.

How Labour used the law to keep criticism of Israel secret | Politics | The Guardian

The full extent of government anxiety about the state of British-Israel relations can be exposed for the first time today in a secret document seen by the Guardian.

The document reveals how the Foreign Office successfully fought to keep secret any mention of Israel contained on the first draft of the controversial, now discredited Iraq weapons dossier. At the heart of it was nervousness at the top of government about any mention of Israel's nuclear arsenal in an official paper accusing Iraq of flouting the UN's authority on weapons of mass destruction.

The dossier was made public this week, but the Foreign Office succeeded before a tribunal in having the handwritten mention of Israel kept secret.

The FO never argued that the information would damage national security. The Guardian has seen the full text and a witness statement from a senior Foreign Office official, who argued behind closed doors that any public mention of the candid reference would seriously damage UK/Israeli relations. In the statement, he reveals that in the past five years there have been 10 substantial incidents and 20 more minor ones relating to Israeli concerns about attitudes to their government within Whitehall.

Earlier this week, a newspaper wrote an article claiming the SPD wants the minority government option. In a first rection, the SPD did NOT deny it. (They did today.)

I think that's a trial balloon, with two goals: (1) to test how the idea is received (it was received with outrage from conservatives), and (2) to make the neoliberal FDP feel queasy and more willing to consider an SPD-Greens-SPD "traffic lights" coalition.

*Traitor*, n.
A benighted individual who perceives an illusory distinction between serving his nation and abetting the criminals who govern it.