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Simon
26-01-03, 22:57
Prodi Answers Rumsfeld: Europeans Wise, Not Old

Saturday, January 25 2003 @ 09:11 AM GMT

"'It's not old age that makes Europeans oppose war, it is wisdom. Europeans are not old, they are just wise,' Prodi said following the meeting of the High Level Group .."

BRUSSELS - The President of the European Commission Romano Prodi ridiculed US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld for calling France and Germany as "old Europe."

"It's not old age that makes Europeans oppose war, it is wisdom. Europeans are not old, they are just wise," Prodi said following the meeting of the High Level Group on 'Dialogue between Peoples and Cultures' in Brussels Thursday afternoon, but his statement was dispatched to the press on Friday evening.

Prodi added that he finds it difficult to see France and Germany as old, when they have been able to turn their whole history on its head. "France and Germany have buried the hatchet and created a shared future out of a tragic past. If that is supposed to mean they are old, I think a wrong conclusion has been drawn," said Prodi.

"Germany has been a problem and France has been a problem," Rumsfeld told Washington's foreign press corps on Wednesday. "You're thinking of Europe as Germany and France. I don't," he said. "I think that's old Europe."

On Thursday, the French and German leaders reiterated their opposition to war as they continued celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Elysee Treaty between the two countries.

Germany and France are against "legitimizing war" on Iraq, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder told a 500-strong student parliament in Berlin Thursday during Elysee Treaty celebrations.

"I have said that for Germany we cannot approve legitimizing war" against Iraq in any future vote on military action at the United Nations Security Council, Schroeder said. "It's our common policy," added French President Jacques Chirac.

On Tuesday during a meeting of his Social Democrats party, Schroeder had said: "Don't expect Germany to approve a resolution which would give legitimacy to war." It was the clearest indication yet of how Germany might vote if a new resolution on military action were put to the Security Council, which Berlin will chair from February 1.

A government spokesman said on Wednesday that Germany would only vote against a war or abstain. In the past, Schroeder has opposed any war and has refused to contribute German troops to one, even with UN backing, but he has not wanted to commit himself on a vote before the wording of any resolution was known.

Chirac, for his part, said on Tuesday that: "for us, war is always evidence of failure. Everything must be done to avoid war." The two leaders confronted the French and German high school students as part of celebrations marking the 40th anniversary of the Elysee Treaty that sealed the two countries' reconciliation 18 years after the end of World War II.

-[Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA).] Published at the Palestine Chronicle.