[PEN-L:5744] (Fwd) Tony Blair's spin doctor is in Brussels telling NATO how

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Date sent:              Wed, 21 Apr 1999 15:07:37 -0700
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From:                   Sid Shniad <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject:                Tony Blair's spin doctor is in Brussels telling NATO how to
        tell "a story"

The Globe and Mail                              Wednesday, April 21, 1999

Report on Business:
  
EUROPE'S WAR, EUROPE'S PEACE

        Getting the word out to the world's media so important 
        that British Prime Minister Tony Blair's chief spin doctor 
        is in Brussels to tell the NATO team how to tell "a story".

        By Peter Cook

Brussels -- At the Hotel Eurovillage, a group that calls itself the 
International Crisis Group briefs the press on why NATO's strategy 
in the Balkans is doomed to failure. A quick glance at the schedule 
shows the event is neatly timed to precede NATO's more reassuring 
briefing at its headquarters in suburban Evere, a daily event now 
entering its fifth week.
        Brussels, host city of the European Union and also host city 
of NATO, is not a wartime capital in the same exposed way that 
Belgrade is. But it is home to what is arguably the most crucial 
apparatus of modern warfare as the place from which one side's view 
of what occurred in the skies over Yugoslavia on the previous night 
is disseminated to the world's media. Presently, this is judged to be 
so important that British Prime Minister Tony Blair's chief spin 
doctor and confidant, Alastair Campbell, is in town to instruct the 
NATO team on how they should use each day to tell "a story" rather 
than being so boringly factual and frank.
        Whatever stories get told, it is clear that Europe, and 
Europe's capital, are in the front line. Brussels' dual function has 
already produced a European Council meeting at which 15 leaders 
proposed a peacekeeping force in Kosovo that would be led by 
NATO and mandated by the United Nations. Prior to its 
deployment, there would be a Serb military withdrawal and cessation 
of the bombing.
        That initiative went nowhere, but it has not stopped others 
making the connection between the war with Yugoslav President 
Slobodan Milosevic and their own aspirations. Over the weekend, 
Albania suggested that the price for its acceptance of so many 
Kosovar refugees should be immediate admission to the European 
Union. Since there is now a 12-nation lineup of other countries 
seeking admission and Albania ranks as the poorest and possibly 
most disorganized nation in Europe, its efforts at queue-jumping 
were not taken too seriously.
        The reality however is that this is Europe's war and the 
destruction being wrought by NATO bombs, the broken bridges 
across the Danube, the wrecked oil and power installations, the 
ruined road and rail communications, plus the towns and villages 
torched by Serbian forces, will in the fullness time -- and in the 
context of what NATO hopes is a liberated Kosovo and a 
Yugoslavia cleansed of Mr. Milosevic -- have to be rebuilt at 
someone's expense. Europe acknowledges that it will almost 
certainly be at its expense. Last week, when they made their peace 
bid, Europe's leaders talked of turning Kosovo into a UN 
protectorate that they would administer, and of creating a stability 
pact for the whole of southeastern Europe.
        Too often in the past, European rhetoric has got ahead of 
reality. And one has to wonder whether this is another such case -- 
especially when that spellbinding rhetorician, French President 
Jacques Chirac, talks of the European Union having "a vocation and 
a capacity" to be a kindly rich uncle to the Balkan states.
        To date, Europe has shown itself less than enthusiastic about 
the EU candidacy of two of the region's larger states, Romania and 
Bulgaria, putting them near the bottom of its list of applicants. 
Others such as Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, Albania 
and Moldova are unstable or undemocratic or both, and have not 
been on anyone's radar screen when it comes to EU membership.
        The current view is that a war, hastily entered into to stop 
Mr. Milosevic, appears to have no end in sight. But end it will, 
eventually. At which point, the commitments made to reconstruct 
large swathes of the former Yugoslavia will be substantial. Nor is it 
just a case of repairing what has been destroyed in the immediate 
war zone. All trade on the Danube from Budapest to the Black Sea 
has come to a halt. And a dozen national economies in a region 
stretching from Ukraine to Slovakia and southward to Greece have 
been badly hurt.
        Europe's response to this is that it will do the job. In the 
words of German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, "it is important 
that the EU feels responsible for the development of the region, its 
infrastructure, its standard of education and its economic and social 
structure."
        That is a mighty commitment to make for a union that 
squabbles continually about money and keeps putting back the date 
when it will admit democratic, fast-developing states like Poland and 
Hungary. A suggestion has been made that the Balkan states might 
form a new category of associate nations that have no early hope of 
being full EU members; they could be called "autonomous" states of 
the EU to signify that they have Brussels' help and protection. 
Whatever the nomenclature, it is a huge leap in the dark for the 
European Union. It now consists of 15 rich countries who are slowly 
opening the door to 12 poorer ones and who now say that, in 
addition to this, they are prepared to take responsibility for perhaps 
another seven new, needy "nations" that were part of the old 
Yugoslavia or had a common border with it.
        Is that a war-time promise or something real?