The Great Debate UK

Did Lithuania host a secret CIA prison?

-Clara Gutteridge, Renditions Investigator at legal charity Reprieve. The opinions expressed are her own.-

I welcome the Lithuanian parliament’s announcement that it will investigate allegations that a secret CIA prison operated on its territory from early 2004 to late 2005.

Unlike Poland and Romania – also alleged to have hosted secret CIA torture sites in the years following the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan – the Lithuanians have responded in a way that befits a modern European democracy.

“If this is true,” Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite said, “Lithuania has to clean up, accept responsibility, apologize, and promise that it will never happen again.”

By contrast, such openness has failed to emerge elsewhere in Eastern Europe. The Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly sessions in 2006-2007, which considered Swiss Senator Dick Marty’s report detailing the allegations against Poland and Romania, were perhaps the most depressing political debates I have ever witnessed.

Representatives from all sides of the political spectrum in Poland and Romania united to “refute” the allegations. When the so-called moderates were asked in private why they were so furiously refusing to even countenance these extremely serious allegations, the response was, “you don’t understand – this is an attack against our country, and to consider it would be un-patriotic”.

Evidently, news of the importance of encouraging healthy dissent in a parliamentary democracy has yet to reach some parts of the New Europe, and Lithuania should be applauded for bucking this trend. As a newer recruit to NATO and the EU, Lithuania has far more to be insecure about when it comes to maintaining U.S. relations than relative old-hands Poland and Romania, yet its president has bravely chosen to stand for political accountability rather than trying to suppress the truth.

from Breakingviews:

EU looks lonely on climate high ground

Negotiations to save the planet from catastrophic climate change are heading for trouble, five weeks before a crucial U.N. conference in Copenhagen.

The European Union has been at the forefront in pressing for binding, internationally monitored reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, and funding from industrialised countries to help developing nations switch to clean energy.

"We can now look the rest of the world in the eyes and say 'we have done our job. We are ready for Copenhagen'," European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso boasted last Friday after EU leaders papered over their differences over how to finance climate protection in the developing world.

Even in Europe, which last year adopted ambitious goals to cut its own output of carbon dioxide by at least 20 percent by 2020, there are signs of climate fatigue setting in.

This is partly because the Europeans have raised unrealistic expectations of a global treaty to replace the Kyoto protocol on climate change when it expires in 2012. The United States never ratified or implemented the 1997 Kyoto deal, nor did the main emerging countries.

The unresolved struggle in the U.S. Congress over a climate bill, and the reluctance of China and India to accept binding international curbs on carbon emissions mean the most that can be expected in Copenhagen is a political agreement based mostly on voluntary national pledges. Even that is uncertain. So the EU risks being stranded on its own moral high ground.

Last week's wrangle among the 27 EU leaders over how to share the cost of helping poorer states fight global warming was a foretaste of the likely discord in the 193-nation U.N. negotiations from Dec. 7-18.

from Commentaries:

Shelved missile shield tests NATO unity

After just six weeks as NATO secretary-general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen has his first crisis. The alliance may be slowly bleeding in an intractable war in Afghanistan, but the immediate cause is the U.S. administration's decision to shelve a planned missile shield due to have been built in Poland and the Czech Republic.

The shield, energetically promoted by former President George W. Bush, was designed to intercept a small number of missiles fired by Iran or some other "rogue state". But Russia saw it as a threat to its own nuclear deterrent and NATO's new east European members saw it as a useful deterrent against Russian bullying, by putting U.S. strategic assets on their soil.

President Barack Obama's decision to drop plans to install it on Polish and Czech territory leaves those former Soviet satellites feeling betrayed -- because they expended political capital to win parliamentary support -- and more exposed to a resurgent Russia, especially after its use of force against Georgia last year.

Obama's move is clearly part of a warming of U.S. relations with Moscow from which Washington hopes to gain help in return on supply routes to Afghanistan, pressure on Iran to rein in its nuclear programme, and an agreement on radical cuts in nuclear arsenals. But this "reset" of U.S.-Russian relations has only exacerbated the rift within NATO over Russia.

The three Baltic states and Poland were particularly critical of NATO's low-key response to Moscow's military action in Georgia. Some said the refusal of west European allies led by Germany and France to agree at a NATO summit last year to putting Georgia and Ukraine on a path to NATO membership emboldened the Kremlin to act. President Dimitry Medvedev's harsh attack on Ukraine's leader in an open letter last month fanned their fears of Russian bullying of its neighbours.

East European officials cite Moscow's playing with the gas taps and trade disputes, and its apparent determination to keep its Black Sea fleet in the Crimean port of Odessa Sevastopol beyond a 2017 deadline agreed with Ukraine as part of a strategy of tension intended to reverse the "colour revolutions" in Kiev and Tbilisi, and bring other former Soviet republics to heel.

All that makes it a particularly awkward moment for Rasmussen to deliver his inaugural keynote speech on NATO-Russia relations on Friday in Brussels. The former Danish prime minister has put a few noses out of joint in his first weeks by making clear he intends to run NATO in a more results-oriented way, leaving less room and time for ambassadors in the North Atlantic Council to debate any idea to a standstill. He has set strict time-limits on council meetings, streamlined flabby agendas and outsourced the drafting of a new Strategic Concept to a group of 12 experts led by former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, on which not all allies are represented.

from Commentaries:

Politics, economics collide over Opel

Political and economic logic are set to collide in the byzantine decision-making over the future of German carmaker Opel, the main European arm of fallen U.S. auto giant General Motors. If politics prevail, as seems likely, the cost to German taxpayers will be higher and the chances of commercial success lower.

The aim of the Berlin government and four federal states, which are sustaining Opel with bridging finance, is to save as many German jobs and production sites as possible. That makes political sense ahead of September's general election. But the business logic is that only a greatly slimmed-down Opel can survive in an industry with chronic overcapacity. In theory, it is up to GM's board to choose among the three offers it expected to receive on Monday from Canadian-Austrian car parts maker Magna <MGa.TO>, Belgian financial investor RHJ <RJHI.BR>, and, less plausibly, Chinese state-owned auto maker BAIC. But there are several other powerful players with a say. They include the trustees responsible for the company since GM entered U.S. bankruptcy in June, the German federal and state governments, Opel's works council and, last but not least, the European Commission, which must approve the restructuring plan as a condition for authorising the state aid.

The German authorities and Opel's workforce prefer Magna's bid, which is backed by Russia's Sberbank <SBER03.MM> and automaker GAZ. The strategy is to seek growth in the dynamic but volatile Russian market. Magna requires the most state aid -- 4.5 billion euros -- but has pledged to keep all German production sites and cut 10,000 of the 50,000 workforce across Europe, of which just 2,500 would go in Germany. GM Europe also assembles Opels in Belgium, Spain and Poland, and in Britain under the Vauxhall marque.

GM management is thought to prefer RHJ because its offer includes a buy-back clause that could put Detroit back in the driver's seat after three years in which Opel would be shrunk. RHJ wants less state aid -- 3.8 billion euros -- and plans a similar number of job cuts. However, the make-up of those cuts would be unpalatable to the Germans: it plans to shrink the plant at Bochum and idle that in Eisenach until 2012.

However smart business this may be, it is lousy politics. Bochum, in the Ruhr industrial rust belt, is still smarting from the offshoring of a Nokia plant to Romania. And Eisenach was the first new car factory to open in ex-communist eastern Germany. Indeed if GM defies Berlin's wishes, the government has said it would reconsider the offer of state aid to any other bidder.

The key may ultimately lie in Brussels. Germany's economics minister says the EU competition watchdog will require any buyer to inject more of its own funds as a condition for allowing state aid. That could lead to a more rational business solution, but it could also drive Opel into a dead end by making the deal unattractive to investors seeking a cheap ride.

German Opel rescue tests EU road rules

– Paul Taylor is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own –

Mon Dieu! Are the Germans starting to behave like the French?

Berlin’s efforts to salvage carmaker Opel from the wreckage of U.S. auto giant General Motors pose as big a challenge to Europe’s single market as French attempts earlier this year to tie loans to its carmakers to keeping jobs and factories in France.

The European Commission, which enforces EU competition rules, made President Nicolas Sarkozy drop any formal condition on the aid to Renault and Peugeot. But it seems ill-placed politically to stop the German juggernaut, even though the deal seems to be pegged to keeping German factories open and making any job cuts and closures elsewhere.

Facing a general election in September, Chancellor Angela Merkel wants to save Opel by providing 1.5 billion euros in bridging finance until it can be taken over by private investors backed by several billion more euros in state loan guarantees.

Federal and state leaders have pushed the suitors into a bidding war to preserve Opel’s 25,000 jobs and four production sites in Germany in preference to other GM plants in Britain, Belgium, Spain and Poland.

That amounts to using German taxpayers’ superior financial muscle to skew Europe’s level playing field. It is not only unfair to European neighbours but also to other German and European car manufacturers, under market pressure to reduce huge overcapacity in the sector.