A long and difficult summit

Brussels: Rarely have I seen David Cameron look so frustrated. He strode into his post-summit news conference with his mouth puckered as he blew out hard.

He rattled through his prepared statement. His emphasis was not on what the EU had achieved but the dangers that lay ahead.

Gaddafi was "still on the rampage" he said. Things may be getting worse not better.

There was a risk that Libya would become a "failed pariah state". Most significantly, though, he said the world had to learn, not just the lesson of Iraq, but the lesson of Bosnia where there wasn't military action even when it was necessary to protect thousands of civilians.

The prime minister, it is only fair to report, insisted publicly that he was not frustrated but behind the scenes officials described "a long and difficult" summit at which the EU's 27 leaders had spent two or three hours arguing about the exact wording of their declaration on Libya.

Out went a specific reference to no-fly zones - a setback for David Cameron. In went the words "all necessary means" after, sources claimed, the prime minister and the EU's Herman Van Rompuy drafted a "satisfactory" compromise which could be accepted by hawks and doves alike.

The German Chancellor Angela Merkel made it clear in her post-summit news conference that her country was a long way from supporting any such action.

At issue, though, was not just the question of whether Nato or its members (21 of whom were sat around the summit table) should or could intervene militarily in Libya but something much more fundamental.

A number of East European states - the Czech Republic, Romania and Slovakia - argued that the Arab Spring was not equivalent to the re-birth of democracy in their countries after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Some, I'm told, argued, in effect, that "the Arabs don't do democracy".

Saif Gaddafi may believe that it's time for action (see earlier post) but many here in Brussels do not agree.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/nickrobinson/2011/03/a_long_and_diff.html

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