I haven’t much to say about this that I haven’t already said, but the idea of Spain forming part of a NATO contingent which is under a UN mandate would seem to me to represent real progress.
“Yes there is some doubt about the Spanish contingent but otherwise the Iraq force is there,” said one. “It [...]

Trying to get away from the emotionally traumatising, this article caught my eye. Clearly it relates to my earlier post, and does have a Spanish connection, if only a rather tangential one.
I thoroughly endorse what the Financial Times has to say. We need multilateralism now more than ever. We should not simply think ‘Europe First’, [...]

from Fareed Zakaria:
“Some in Spain have argued that if an Islamic group proves to be the culprit, Spaniards will blame Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar. It was his support for America and the war in Iraq that invited the wrath of the fundamentalists. But other recent targets of Islamic militants have been Turkey, Morocco, Tunisia, [...]

I am working on another post. I continue to think that Eta forms part of the picture in Madrid. I may be wrong. In any event this article summarises another part of the picture which I am sure as Europeans affects us all.

Read [...]

Germany’s center-right and liberal parties have finally agreed on a candidate for the country’s largely, but not completely, symbolic presidency. Because these parties have been winning elections at the state level over the last few years, they have a working majority in the body that elects the president, even though they are actually in opposition.
(The [...]

I’m certainly no expert on the Cyprus question. But John Quiggin at Crooked Timber has made the claim that the upcoming referendum on the reunification of Cyprus is of monumental importance for the future of Europe, the EU, and the Middle East–so much so that the eventual fate of Iraq (very likely “an imperfectly democratic [...]

This is really a case of two stories in search of a common theme: a theme, that is, which goes beyond the rather random unifying factor of the work of Shanghai based ‘foreign correspondent’ Fons Tuinstra. In fact both points emerged from browsing his blog.
In the first place we have the problem with the [...]

A search for “Zimbabwe” on A Fistful of Euros currently yields:
No pages were found containing “zimbabwe”.
Not for much longer.
See the reports here and here respectively:
The EU is to increase the number of top Zimbabwean officials facing targeted sanctions by the end of February.
…..
The EU imposed travel sanctions on Mugabe’s regime in February 2002 [owing] to [...]

Now here’s an interesting one. (And please note that in keeping with recent Fistful tradition - as identified by Ms T - I am putting a question mark before the title). Pascal Lamy is reportedly considering a discussion paper which proposes allowing countries to impose import bans on products from other countries that do not [...]

I don’t know if he had Europe specifically in mind, but this is the message from Singapore’s finance minister Lee Kuan Yew in this interview in the latest issue of Yale Global Online. As he puts it:”If you’re not driven by profit, and do what the communists used to, which means price equals cost [...]