Intelligence

Secret CIA prisons no thorn in Europe-US relations

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

Brussels, Dec 5, IRNA
Europe-US-Analysis
The European Union is not expected to make any fuss with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who this week begins a four-nation European tour, over reports that the American secret service, the CIA, is using airports and secret prisons to incarcerate terror suspects on European soil.

Anybody familiar with European politics and diplomacy is well aware that the warnings by the European Commissioner for Security and Justice Franco Frattini that the consequences for those EU member states hosting the secret jails could be "extremely serious," is a mere exercise in public relations.

It is also said that a number of European countries like Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and Sweden are now investigating into reports that the CIA was involved in kidnapping of terror suspects on their territory or used their airports to transport terror suspects.

But will any sane person believe that the US could have carried out such clandestine activities without the approval and even support of the European governments concerned?
This plain view was clearly illustrated in a report carried by the Reuters news agency Sunday.

US officials have signaled that Rice, on her trip to Berlin, Bucharest, Kiev and Brussels, will remind the Europeans that "they have cooperated in US operations and tell them to do more to win over their publics and deflect criticism directed at the United States," said the agency.

Besides, the US together with EU member Britain has committed even more serious violations of the UN Charter and international law by waging an illegal war and occupying a sovereign UN state, Iraq.

Furthermore, US abuses in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay are still fresh on the international community's mind.

But did any European country even condemn these gross American abuses, leave aside taking any action?
Yes, a few European states like Germany, France and Belgium merely voiced their "opposition" to the US-led war against Iraq.

However, very swiftly the "transatlantic row" over Iraq was put behind and now the Europeans and Americans are eagerly cooperating for reconstruction of the Arab country which lies in ruins and chaos.

Europe's blatant hypocrisy on foreign policy is exposed by a comparison of its timid approach towards those US violations with its bellicose attitude in dealing with the Iran nuclear issue.

The EU wants to haul the Islamic Republic to the UN Security Council on mere "suspicions" that Tehran might divert its nuclear program to produce nuclear weapons.

Like the Iraq war, the Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, etc, the CIA prison uproar will also soon disappear from the front pages of the estern press and be forgotten in the dust bin of history.

Lessons to be drawn by the rest of the world are that Europe and the US share a common agenda to keep their economic, political and cultural domination of the world intact and to this effect no amount of human rights violations or abuses in the "US war on terror" would lead to any rift in transatlantic cooperation.

The post-9/11 message from the White House, "You're either with us or against us" is ingrained deep in the European psyche.

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