THE European Union gave warning yesterday that it could refuse to make a financial contribution towards the cost of rebuilding Iraq if the United States attacks without formal backing from the United Nations.

Chris Patten, the EU’s External Relations Commissioner, also said that war with Iraq would fuel terrorism, alienate EU members and cause enormous damage to the established world order.

In a speech given to Euro-MPs in Strasbourg, but clearly directed at Washington, Mr Patten openly challenged claims by President Bush that a war to overthrow President Saddam Hussein would combat terrorism and spread democracy in the Middle East. He said that experience had shown that wars are more likely to recruit terrorists than to deter them. “It is hard to build democracy at the barrel of a gun, when history suggests that it is more usually the product of long internal development within a society,” he said.

In a clear sign of the hardening of attitudes against any pre-emptive American-led attack on Saddam, Mr Patten emphasised that Washington should not expect the European Union automatically to fund the peace. “It will be that much more difficult for the EU to co-operate fully and on a large scale — also in the longer-term reconstruction process — if events unfold without proper UN cover,” he said.

Mr Patten said that the EU would be more likely to be generous if the legitimacy of the military action was undisputed and if the UN was clearly in charge of the reconstruction process and the new political order that emerged in Iraq. The warning is in sharp contrast to the aftermath of previous conflicts. The EU, already the largest giver of humanitarian aid in Iraq, is a large donor in Afghanistan, where it is spending almost £600 million this year, and in the Balkans.

Mr Patten also dismissed as “exceptionally maladroit” the recent decision by the Bush Administration to call in five leading American contractors to discuss the reconstruction work that they could do in Iraq after a military conflict.

Pointing to the damage that an unauthorised attack on Iraq would cause to the UN, Nato and transatlantic relations in general, Mr Patten went out of his way to give warning to the United States that this could not be “clinically” separated from other events in the region. He challenged Washington to intensify its efforts to achieve an historic reconciliation between Palestinians and Israelis.

Mr Patten said: “What I am absolutely sure about is that to invade Iraq while failing to bring peace to the Middle East would create exactly the sort of conditions in which terrorism would be likely to thrive. And none of us would be immune from the consequences.”

Openly rebuking France and Germany on one side and Britain and Spain on the other over their “public squabbling”, Mr Patten laid the blame for the rift in the European Union over Iraq firmly on the bloc’s largest members. “This has not been a good time for those who believe that the way forward for European foreign policy is to leave things to the big member states,” he said.

Mr Patten also said that the deep divisions over Iraq could put at risk the EU’s enlargement plans to take in ten, mainly former communist, countries in just over a year’s time. There have been fears that the historic process is turning sour ever since President Chirac of France dismissed the accession countries as “badly brought up children” when some issued statements in January in support of the US.

Those countries’ European vocation should not be called into question simply because of their views on the Iraq crisis, Mr Patten said. But he also reminded them that as EU members they should not undermine the Union’s ability to act as a cohesive force in international relations.

Annan questions legitimacy of war

Kofi Annan, the United Nations Secretary-General, gave warning again yesterday that the legitimacy of any war against Iraq without UN backing would be called into question.

Writing in Le Monde, the French daily newspaper, Mr Annan said that taking action against Iraq without the backing of other Security Council members would mean a lack of political support that would condemn a post-military phase to failure.

“If they (the Security Council members) cannot agree on a common position and if some of them launch action without the support of the Council, the legitimacy of this action will be widely questioned and it will not obtain the political support required to ensure its success in the long term,” he said.

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