Senior figures from across Austria’s political spectrum have condemned the head of the far-right Freedom Party, Heinz-Christian Strache, over his party’s European election campaign directed against Israel and Turkey.

In an advertisement in the newspaper Kronen Zeitung, Freedom opposes the accession of Turkey and Israel to the European Union. Although Turkey is in EU accession talks, Israel is not.

Heinz-Christian Strache prepares for a TV discussion in Vienna, Sept. 17, 2008. REUTERS/Heinz-Peter Bader (AUSTRIA)

“What is the most distasteful and despicable is the style,” says Ernst Strasser, the conservatives’ candidate in next month’s elections for the European Parliament, referring to Strache’s campaign. “This style is abusive. He vilifies other religions and ethnicities.”

According to Chancellor Werner Faymann, Strache is “a hate monger, a disgrace”.

“It makes absolutely no sense for Israel to be mentioned. Israel is not a candidate for accession. There isn’t even an accession process. The only reason to mention Israel is to serve anti-Semitic prejudices. It is disgraceful.”

Strache, who denies he is preaching hatred, accuses Faymann of being a “rabble-rouser” and abusing his position as chancellor.

The dispute indicates more than just political opportunism in the run-up to the poll, although that is obviously playing a part.

Freedom, which polled 18 percent in September’s national election, has become a hard-right party since former dental technician Strache took the helm in 2005. It has also focused on religion. A recent rally where Strache waved a crucifix drew condemnation from politicians and religious leaders. Another campaign slogan, “The West in Christian hands”, was not well received, either.

The hard-right rhetoric, an eye-catching campaign aimed at the youth vote and dissatisfaction with the centre parties, appears to have given Freedom a boost. However, Strache’s line has at times been a bonus for the more moderate Alliance for Austria’s Future, the party of late far-right leader Joerg Haider, who used to lead Freedom.

A controversial European Union election campaign poster of Austrian far right Freedom party in Vienna May 11, 2009. Posterreads ” The West in Christian hands - Judgement day”. REUTERS/Dominic Ebenbichler

The parties are often lumped together as “Austria’s far right”, such as when they polled almost a third of the vote last year. Together they could make a serious political force — they outpolled the conservatives and were just behind the Social Democrats in September. the Alliance has tried to use the dispute to portray itself as the more mature. “(Freedom) is using the only way to mobilise votes it has,” Alliance’s EU candidate Ewald Stadler says.

Freedom’s popularity has nevertheless affected mainstream policy, with centre parties loath to open up a flank to the far right. The conservatives and Social Democrats have spoken out against the EU asylum directive and oppose lifting labour market restrictions to the eight ex-communist countries that joined the EU in 2004.

Members of the European Parliament engaged in some mutual back-slapping at their final session this week before an election next month.

“Nowadays very few decisions are taken in the European Union without the express consent and participation of the European Parliament,” said the parliament’s president, Hans-Gert Poettering. 

“Increasingly, the European Parliament has become the fulcrum of political compromise at European level,” he said, reeling off a long list of laws passed in the assembly’s five-year term. 

Graham Watson, leader of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats in the chamber, hailed Poettering’s work: ”Today, I think that I can speak for many when I say that you have earned our respect and affection.”

They are fine-sounding words – but few of the 375 million people who are eligible to vote in the June 4-7 election to a new parliament are likely to have heard them. And few are likely to care.

Opinion polls suggest the turnout will be low, with only about one in three respondents planning to vote. They also suggest European citizens know little about what the parliament does, even though it is responsible for passing pan-European laws that can have a direct impact on their lives.

This apathy could open the way for non-mainstream parties.    

One of these is the Libertas party, a pan-European group which opposes the Lisbon treaty intended to reform the EU’s institutions to make decision-making easier and give the EU more clout on the world stage.

Another is the UK Independence Party which wants to pull Britain out of the EU.  Its leader, Nigel Farage, sounded a dissonant note on Wednesday when he accused it of being undemocratic in a speech from the floor of the assembly in the French city of Strasbourg.

He said the parliament had “bulldozed” aside the wishes of Dutch and French voters who rejected the EU’s draft constitution in 2005 and the desires of Irish voters who said ‘no’ last year to the Lisbon reform treaty that is meant to replace it.

“This parliament has wilfully carried on ignoring the wishes of the people. You just don’t get it do you? ‘No’ means ‘no’,” Farage told the assembly. 

The parliament appears to have a long way to go to convince voters it is relevant to their daily lives.

Little wonder, then, that Poettering urged members of the assembly to go out and explain to voters why the parliament is significant. 

“The next five years will see hugely important decisions face this Parliament. If you care what decisions it takes, and you care who is taking them, then make your voice heard,” Poettering said in a recent message to voters.

Judging by the opinion polls, the members of parliament will have a hard time winning voters over. And they have barely a month to do so.

European Union officials are thinking the unthinkable — they could hold a summit in July, during the normally sacrosanct summer break set aside for Brussels’ Eurocrats.

Diplomats say there is mild panic in the EU capital at the thought that the regular June summit — where the bloc is due to discuss the Lisbon treaty reforming the EU — could be chaired by Eurosceptic Czech President Vaclav Klaus.

The idea is that it would be better to postpone the discussions on the treaty until July, by which time Sweden will have replaced the Czech Republic as holder of the EU presidency.

Prague has not yet confirmed which of its officials will chair the June 18-19 Brussels summit after the collapse of the Prague government last month. But Klaus, who has described the Lisbon treaty as an irrelevance, could try to do so.

The aim of the Brussels summit is to agree a set of assurances to Ireland that the Lisbon treaty will not undermine its sovereignty — a move intended to help Dublin win a second referendum on the text slated for October.

Treaty backers say it will streamline the functioning of the 27-nation EU and give it a stronger voice in the world, for example by creating a more permanent EU president. 

Some of them say it would be better not to have Klaus trying to broker a deal to rescue the treaty if the summit talks become difficult. 

Others give the idea of a July summit short shrift. Sweden itself is not keen. Ireland has described the debate as”speculative conversations” and would prefer to get on with it.

“Postponing it until July causes significant difficulties,” Foreign Minister Micheal Martin said of the packed domestic Irish political calendar leading up to the referendum.

It looks like Brussels’ bureaucrats may get their July break after all.

    There is a growing feeling of “fin de siecle” in Brussels  these days, a sense of degeneration, of euro-depression.
    But people across the European Union do not seem to care.

    The collective EU leadership is widely seen as weak and demoralised and the Czech government has collapsed in the middle of its six-month presidency of the 27-nation bloc, an unprecedented event that is bound to leave much unfinished business before an election to the European Parliament in June.

    Nobody knows what the EU’s institutions are going to look
like in the future, with the Lisbon treaty that is supposed to
reform them in limbo.

    The executive European Commission and the parliament are in
transition, the former avoiding difficult decisions and debates
for fear of harming the treaty’s ratification. As a result, an
important debate on EU budget reforms can’t even get started.

    The global economic crisis is forcing governments to take
extraordinary measures that do not always coincide with EU rules
but the Commission seems to turn a blind eye in some cases. But
then, the EU has always been good at fudging.

    There are also plenty of signs of EU enlargement fatigue.

    But do people care? Judging by a poll this week, the answer
is no.

    The Eurobarometer poll showed turnout in the election
could be the lowest ever. Only 34 percent of EU adults are
certain they will vote, a sign of no-confidence in the EU 
institutions.

 A “fin de siecle” should offer hope of rebirth, a new
beginning. It’s hard to feel any at the moment. The EU’s
bureaucratic machine will lumber along until better times come.
But how much does anyone care?

Poles and Czechs, their economies still relatively robust  despite global recession, are up in arms about what they see as international investors’ tendency to tar them with the same brush as their more troubled neighbours such as Hungary, Ukraine and Latvia.

But if history is any guide, investors are unlikely to be impressed, at least in the shorter term.

Poland’s zloty has fallen more than debt-ridden Hungary’s forint since last summer, even though Budapest had to negotiate an emergency IMF-led bailout, while the Czech crown is also down
some 16 percent from its 2008 highs.

But at an EU summit last weekend, Polish and Czech leaders refused to back a Hungarian appeal for a 180-billion-euro region-wide bailout, saying they did not need such help.

The European Commission and German Chancellor Angela Merkel have endorsed the Polish and Czech pleas to be judged on their own merits rather than by their geographical location.

“Not all the countries are in the same situation. You cannot compare the situation of the Latvian economy to the situation of the Czech economy,” European Economic and Monetary Affairs
Commissioner Joaquin Almunia said in Prague this week.

However, in his book “The Return of Depression Economics”, Nobel economics laureate Paul Krugman describes how countries as diverse as mainly agrarian Indonesia and industrial powerhouse South Korea were swept up by the 1997 Asian crisis.

“The appetite of investors for the region had been fed by the perception of a shared “Asian miracle”. When one country’s economy turned out not to be all that miraculous after all, it shook faith in all the others,” he wrote.

Krugman also analyses how quickly contagion, in an age of huge cross-border cash flows, struck Latin America in a similarly indiscriminate way, and on several occasions.

Fast forward to 2009, and emerging Europe’s ‘miracle’ is rapidly dissolving. Policymakers will point out that the Czech Republic has higher GDP per capita and far less debt than some older EU member states, but such virtue is not an automatic defence in turbulent times.

And while there are obvious differences — many, though not all, states in central and eastern Europe are EU members which can draw on help from the Union’s institutions, including the European Central Bank — there are some parallels too.

Back in 1997, then-Malaysian leader Mahathir Mohamad accused speculators such as international financier George Soros of being responsible for Southeast Asia’s economic woes and called
for a ban on currency trading.

In a joint statement on Wednesday, eastern European bank supervisors hit out at negative Western press over their financial sectors following commentators’ suggestions that the region may prove to be “the sub-prime of Europe”.

And Polish central bank governor Slawomir Skrzypek called for talks with the European Central Bank and the European Commission on ways to prevent “speculators” who profit from steep falls in currencies such as the zloty from receiving public funds in bailouts being organised by Western governments.

Polish tabloid Fakt was more succinct, comparing foreign bankers speculating against the zloty to “vampires”.

(Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk (L) leaves after shaking hands with Czech Republic’s Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek, whose country currently holds the rotating presidency of EU, at the start of an emergency European Union leaders summit in Brussels March 1, 2009. EU leaders meeting in Brussels on Sunday will discuss possible action on the financial crisis amid concern Eastern European countries may need more help. REUTERS/Sebastien Pirlet (BELGIUM))

Should Israel and/or its allies talk to men like these, the Palestinian Islamists of Hamas, who run the Gaza Strip?

That’s a question that has been revived this week following the end of Israel’s 22-day war in Gaza, which left Hamas rule apparently intact and 1.5 million people in desperate need, and the arrival in the White House of President Barack Obama, who has indicated he might be willing to talk to people his predecessor George W. Bush had shunned.

For now, it looks like talking about talking may be as far as it goes, as we examined in a story earlier in the week. Israel is conducting discussions through Egyptian mediators on prolonging its ceasefire, but is not interested in talking to a movement which rejects the agreements made by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his PLO to accept Israel’s right to exist. Nor are Hamas leaders willing to give Israel the implicit recognition that opening formal negotiations would give - though they do not rule out some contact.

Obama, his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and new Middle East envoy George Mitchell, who notably negotiated an end to IRA violence in Northern Ireland, have given no sign they are about to break radically with the Bush administration’s policies in the region for now, as my colleague Jonathan Wright examined today. Obama notably made his first call to regional leaders on Wednesday to Abbas, a sign many saw of a continued determination to support the secular leader in the West Bank against the movement which defeated his Fatah party in a 2006 parliamentary election and seized full control in Gaza the following year. Obama on Thursday repeated three long-standing conditions, agreed upon by the Quartet of mediating powers, for the boycott of Hamas to end.

And yet, and yet. There is talk about talks. This is notably in Europe, where governments who rallied behind Israel after it ceased fire in Gaza on Jan. 18 also face disquiet among their electorates about the fate of Gazans blockaded into their tiny enclave and denied access to basic reconstruction supplies, like cement and steel piping, after a war that killed some 1,300 and left tens of thousands homeless.  Israel fears such material will be used by Hamas to rearm, including building the rockets with which it has peppered southern Israel for years. But the embargo is taking a toll on ordinary people too. As regional political analyst Mouin Rabbani put it to me: “”The Europeans and other donors, now have a problem. Are you going to say ‘Let them eat cake?’”

It is perhaps significant that, in a speech declaring “victory” in Gaza, Hamas’s exile leader Khaled Meshaal appeared specifically to address Europeans in urging talks: “I tell European nations,” he said in Damascus, “It is time for you to deal with Hamas.” Hamas officials made clear to Reuters that the offer of talks was one specifically to international powers, not to Israel.

To look in more detail at the arguments of those who say it is time to talk to Hamas, one might listen to a speech in the British parliament last week by Gerald Kaufman, a former minister and prominent Jewish supporter of Israel who has been highly critical of recent Israeli policy toward the Palestinians. Likening the offensive in Gaza to Nazi atrocities, he said: “”Hamas is a deeply nasty organisation, but it was democratically elected and it is the only game in town. The boycotting of Hamas … has been a culpable error … You make peace by talking to your enemies.”

French analyst Olivier Roy wrote in the Saudi Gazette this week that it is “time to consider that option” of talking to Hamas. He criticised the Bush administration for what he said was an approach that did not distinguish between enemies like al Qaeda, which have irreconcilable global ambitions, and those like Hamas, which he described as “nothing else than the traditional Palestinian nationalism” - a movement with goals that might be susceptible to negotiation. “The concept of a “war on terror” has thwarted any political approach to the conflicts in favor of an elusive military victory,” Roy wrote.

Another Frenchman taking a close interest in the issue is Yves Aubin de la Messuziere, a retired senior diplomat who twice visited Hamas leaders in Gaza last year. He and the French government have been keen to stress these were private, “research” visits. But the former ambassador has been speaking out strongly for what he sees as an inevitable need to negotiate with Hamas, despite Israel’s distaste for a group it sees as a proxy of its foes in Iran and the perpetrator of dozens of suicide bombings in Israeli cities in the early part of this decade. He developed the theme in some detail in a Web chat hosted by Le Monde newspaper this month and in an interview with Nouvel Observateur magazine , which provides its own English translation.  The diplomat argues that Hamas’s political leadership is capable of negotiations. ”Dialogue … will happen, because Hamas is at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” he said. “If Obama truly wants to be the American president who resolved  this conflict, there will have to be a dialogue with Hamas.”

For a rundown on the opposite view, and one generally shared by the Israeli leaders contesting a general election in just over two weeks, take a look at a blog by former Bush aide David Frum for the National Post. Frum notes the way talk about talks with Hamas is bubbling away behind the scenes, especially in the chancelleries of Europe. And that worries him: ”Starting talks with a group that has not first disavowed violence is an invitation to even more violence,” he said, citing among examples the behaviour of the IRA during a peace process that involved, notably, George Mitchell.  ”Advocates of talks with terrorists often present themselves as pragmatists,” said Frum. “Not so. They are guided by unstated biases and pure wishful thinking.”

The calculations down the decades by governments around the world with armed enemies that oppose them have always been complex and fraught with moral arguments, between the hope that “jaw-jaw is better than war-war” and fear of appeasement and “rewarding terrorism”. This is the fine art of diplomacy mostly conducted behind closed doors. What is, perhaps, more striking then, amid all this cautious and rather technical talk of talking about talks, is some passionate talking from a relatively few Israelis, and Palestinians, of a more profound need to talk, without conditions, simply to try to find some common ground between two peoples who seem locked in endless struggle. While Gaza’s rubble was still smouldering, one of Israel’s most celebrated writers, David Grossman, seized the front-page of the left-leaning daily newspaper Haaretz to pen an impassioned entreaty for dialogue.

“We must speak to the Palestinians … We must speak also to those who do not recognise our right to exist here,” wrote Grossman, author of See under: Love and a veteran peace campaigner who lost a soldier son in Israel’s last war, in Lebanon in 2006. “Instead of ignoring Hamas … we would do better to take advantage of the new reality that has been created by beginning a dialogue with them immediately.”

“We must speak, even if dialogue seems hopeless from the start,” he wrote. “We must speak out of understanding, born as we look out at the horrible devastation, as we grasp that the harm we are capable of inflicting on each other … is so enormous and so destructive and so utterly senseless, that if we surrender to it and accept its logic, it will end up destroying us all.”

Posted by Andrei Makhovsky and Salah Sarrar

Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko and Libyan leader
Muammar Gaddafi found they had plenty in common when they met in
Minsk this week.

Both their  countries have started to come in from the cold after years of
international isolation and sanctions that were imposed on their
countries because of their policies.

They also share a vision of a multi-polar world to
counterbalance U.S. influence.

But despite their efforts to improve ties with the West,
they could not avoid a dig at Washington.

“We both see as a key issue that the world must be
multi-polar. We already know what a unipolar world leads to,” Lukashenko said.

Gaddafi, who pitched his tent at one of Lukashenko’s
residences outside Minsk after visiting Russia, said that in their discussions of international issues “our views coincide”.

Mutual praise was not in short supply at Monday’s talks.

Western punitive measures have been lifted on Tripoli while
the European Union is committed to intensified talks with
Belarus and has suspended a visa ban on Lukashenko.

Libya has emerged from the sanctions imposed in connection with the 1988 destruction of a U.S. commercial airliner that killed 270 people in Scotland
and the 1986 bombing of a West Berlin disco that killed three people.

It has since abandoned weapons of mass destruction
and declared an end to confrontation with Washington, leading to a visit in September by U.S. Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice.

Belarus may not be as far down the road to full
normalisation of ties with the West but it has started out on
that road, while remaining mindful of its traditional ties with
Russia, on whom it depends for energy supplies.

Lukashenko was long accused of hounding Belarus’s
opposition, muzzling the press and rigging elections. He has
called for better ties with the West after a row with
traditional ally Russia last year over energy prices.

The EU eased sanctions after Belarus released detainees
deemed political prisoners in August and held a parliamentary
election which Western observers said was an improvement over
earlier contests but still short of acceptable standards.

“We are happy to see your victories in the international
arena. We know how difficult it was to withstand international
sanctions illegally imposed on your people,” Lukashenko said.

Gaddafi, who went on to Ukraine after Belarus, said: “Libya has travelled down a difficult path when international sanctions were imposed on it … and it was at that time that Belarus extended the hand of friendship.”

Another bout of bloody clashes between Congolese Tutsi rebels and government forces, accompanied by vicious looting has sent the hapless civilians of eastern Congo’s North Kivu province once again running for their lives. Tens of thousands of people have fled the fighting, bringing to nearly 1 million the number of people displaced by fighting in North Kivu alone since Congo’s first ever democratic elections two years ago.

The fighting on the border between Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda has triggered the usual round of recriminations between the two countries’ governments. Foreign envoys are jetting back and forth between Kinshasa and Kigali. The United Nations and European Union are both considering sending in extra troops to help the U.N. peacekeeping force, already the world’s biggest at 17,000-strong.

But nobody seems really sure how to stop the violence, end the misery and secure lasting peace for the people of North Kivu.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner and British Foreign Secretary David Miliband are due to meet Congolese President Joseph Kabila in Kinshasa today (Saturday) and travel to the eastern city of Goma, threatened by an offensive by Tutsi rebels this week.

What can be done to end eastern Congo’s vicious circle of violence? Who, if anyone, holds the key to regional peace in Africa’s Great Lakes? And should the United Nations, or the European Union, send more troops to stop the fighting and help stem the humanitarian disaster?

The global financial crisis has produced broad agreement that the world needs a new financial architecture, but world leaders are a long way from reaching agreement on what shape it should take.

Many countries have rescue plans to support banks and unfreeze credit markets. The United States has set in motion reforms to change the relationship between Washington and Wall Street.

But calls are being made for much deeper, coordinated reforms, and a series of global summits is planned to discuss how to reform the financial system. The first of these meetings will be held on Nov. 15 in the United States.

Capitalism as we used to know it may be on its deathbed. Some world leaders have called for a revamp of the 1944 Bretton Woods conference that resulted in the post-World War Two financial order and created the IMF and the World Bank. 

Economists and commentators have been filling newspapers with suggestions about what should be included in the new financial architecture, from more regulation to concerns about climate change and trade.

Some experts say world leaders risk making terrible mistakes of they get it wrong and must stand back and properly assess what went wrong before enacting wholesale reforms. Others say it would be wrong to force one country or region’s vision on another.

There is little doubt we are now, as British Prime Minister Gordon Brown put it, at a “defining moment” for the world economy. But there are more questions than answers.

Can world leaders overcome their differences and live up to the task? Will they have any concrete proposals to discuss on Nov. 15? Will it be more than a big talking shop?

As financial and philanthropist George Soros says, what kind of system will evolve from this is a very open question. 

The European Union has come under sharp criticism for having a fragmented approach to the financial crisis. It is exemplified by Ireland’s go-it-alone decision to guarantee all accounts and Germany’s surprise announcement after a meeting of leading members that it was taking unilateral action too.

Relief, then, that the 27 member states issued a statement on Monday that they would do what it takes to bolster citizens’ savings and build financial stability. Only problem was, they could not coordinate the announcement. First Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi released it, then Portugal. Only after a while did French President Nicholas Sarkozy weigh in. He does head the current EU presidency after all.

No wonder Washington called for more coordination.