The weekend edition of the International Herald Tribune available in London this weekend, carries a report on the sharpening conflict between the Bush administration and European imperialism. >GENEVA In a pointed criticism of U.S. environmental policy, President >Jacques Chirac of France on Friday urged all countries to put into effect >the Kyoto treaty on global warming, which President George W. Bush has >decided to abandon. > >.... > >He did not single out the United States in remarks to the 53-nation UN >Human Rights Commission meeting in Geneva, but he appealed to all >countries, "and first of all the industrialized countries, to fully >implement the Kyoto Protocol on climate change without delay." > >. > >A new round of negotiations is to be held in Bonn in July, and Mr. Bush >made public his position Thursday during a visit to the White House by the >German chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder, who, like Mr. Chirac, favors >international cooperation to reduce global warming. > >... > >Mr. Chirac's remarks did not just reflect French sentiment on the issue. >He was welcomed to Geneva by a local paper's banner headline: "The Planet >Unites in Anger Against Polluter George W. Bush." > >Even the normally low-key World Council of Churches, based in Geneva, >issued a statement calling the American action a "betrayal of their >responsibilities as global citizens." > >The French president also encouraged the UN rights commission to add a >right to a safe environment to the list of rights that countries should >guarantee their citizens. This, he said, was critical for developing >countries, which are the most likely to have their natural environments >damaged. > >In another implicit criticism of the United States, Mr. Chirac also urged >a global ban on the death penalty. He noted that some 100 nations had >already abolished capital punishment, and he warned that since justice was >not infallible, "each execution could be killing an innocent person." > >"And what can one say about executing minors or the mentally deficient?" >Mr. Chirac added. "I call for the universal abolition of the death penalty >with, as a first step, a general moratorium." > >In recent years, criticism has increasingly isolated the United States, >one of the few major countries that still allows the death penalty. > >The issue, which is likely to come up for a vote at the human rights body >next month, is one on which most European countries are united against the >United States. The Swiss president, Moritz Leuenberger, who opened the >session Friday, joined Mr. Chirac in criticizing the use of the death penalty. > >.... Now Chirac, not regarded in France as a left-winger, may not personally be very concerned about the premature death of a number of prisoners who have committed homicide. In terms of political manoeuvring between rival imperialisms however, this is a useful stick with which to beat US imperialism. Even more significant is whether a coalition of imperialist and capitalist countries other than the US can change the conception of human rights to place them in social and environmental context. Chirac's agenda is not to advance socialism, but to protect his allegedly more enlightened version of capitalism. However it is highly significant if world definitions of human rights shift from the abstract atomised rights of individuals in bourgeois society, to rights which have to be interpreted in social and environmental context. This already, despite the fact that Chirac is of course unconscious of the full implications of his pointed remarks, moves the agenda on from what Marx regarded as narrow "bourgeois right". It is bad news for US hegemonism. Watch this space to see whether Bush's clumsy handling of international issues will help bring into being an unwritten coalition of world states intent on making the US at least as accountable as themselves. Chris Burford London
