European Parliament

WARSAW, Poland -- A contentious report that accuses 14 European nations of being complicit in more than 1,200 CIA flights that were used to shuttle terrorist suspects to secret prisons around the world was adopted yesterday by the European Parliament. The vote in Strasbourg, France, was 382-256, with 74 abstentions. Parliamentarians who supported the resolution said the report exposed how European governments had turned a blind eye to human rights violations. Many of those who voted against it said the 76-page report was short on hard evidence and seemed to display an anti-American bias.

LONDON -- In the most dramatic showdown ever between the European Union's elected representatives and its appointed officials, the politicians blinked yesterday, leaving the unelected bureaucrats in control of the institution.Lawmakers in the 626-member European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, had threatened to fire the 20-member commission that administers the EU from Brussels, Belgium, on the grounds that the some of the bureaucrats had engaged in massive fraud and then impeded efforts to ferret out the corruption.

DUBLIN, Ireland -- The dispute over Ireland's virtual ban on abortion accelerated yesterday as four women who represent the country in the European Parliament accused the government of negligence in delaying a statement of its policy on the issue.The women, among Ireland's 16-member delegation to the parliament in Strasbourg, France, said on national radio that they had voted in favor of a European Union measure that would permit abortion in cases of rape and where the life or health of a mother is endangered.

THE mass resignation of the European Union's 20 commissioners, under a cloud of scandal, paralyzes the 15-nation economic giant. The solution of that crisis should strengthen the structure.The commissioners, whose terms expire at year's end, will stay on as caretakers. This sharpens current negotiations among member governments to revise the expensive farm program.It heightens public interest in the normally apathetic June election of the 626-member European Parliament, thought superfluous until now.The EU crisis may also, unfortunately, paralyze negotiations in a damaging trade war with the United States.

PARIS -- Does the right have a future? After being out of the White House for seven years, the Republican Party senses that it has a good chance to regain control of the executive branch. Thus, the phenomenal $36 million in campaign money raised already by Texas Gov. George W. Bush, the GOP's front-runner.The major European parties of the right have no such dream. Not only are they out, but also in Britain and France, they are down and demoralized. The German Christian Democrats are holding up in public opinion against the divided and frequently incoherent coalition government of Social Democrats and Greens of Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, but elections are distant.

PARIS -- The "third way," which serves to describe the programs of the Clinton administration and the Blair government in England, is not an ideology, but an explanation.Third way politicians say they're committed to the social and egalitarian goals of an older left, but are making necessary accommodations to a market capitalism that has proved a more efficient generator of wealth than did the planned economy dear to the old Left.The new German government of Gerhard Schroeder, having shed its original economics minister, Oskar Lafontaine, claims now to practice the third way, calming the spirits of German industrialists who, under Mr. Lafontaine, had threatened emigration, taking their industries' jobs with them.

The National Security Agency has incurred the wrath of some U.S. allies and triggered debate about increased global eavesdropping, thanks to a new report that accuses the agency of spying on European citizens and companies.With the help of a listening post in the moors of northern England, NSA for nearly a decade has been snatching Europe's electronic communications signals, according to a report for the European Parliament."Within Europe, all e-mail, telephone and fax communications are routinely intercepted by the United States National Security Agency, transferring all target information to Fort Meade," said the report.

PARIS -- France's extremist right-wing party, the National Front, has exploded because of the ambitions and the vanities of its leaders. Bruno Megret, a young challenger to the party's founder, Jean-Marie Le Pen, has provoked a split in the movement that guarantees to end the National Front as it now exists.The party receives 12 to 15 percent of the vote in French elections. Mr. Megret's ambition is to move it into the political mainstream. From there, it can only act as a spoiler.Mr. Megret is an educated man, a product of two elite French schools; he attended graduate school at the University of California at Berkeley.

BRUSSELS, Belgium -- In one of the biggest steps ever taken toward uniting the modern democracies of the Old World, seven Western European nations ended controls on their common borders yesterday, opening an era of unrestricted travel between them.Fernand Herman, a member of the European Parliament who has campaigned for more than a decade to lift border controls, called it "an important day, an historic day. It has taken time, but now it is finally done."Mr. Herman made his comments at Brussels' Zaventem Airport, where several politicians had gathered after testing their new freedom by flying in from other European cities.

Don't count Helmut Kohl out yet. The German chancellor's Christian Democrats dealt a harsh blow to polls and pundits by coming in first in the elections to the European Parliament with roughly 39 percent of the German vote against some 33 percent for Social Democrats.The European Parliament is a monthly talk shop in Strasbourg with gradually increasing powers (from minuscule to somewhat more) in the European Union (formerly Common Market and European Community). Its elections are watched partly to show international swings of opinion but also as domestic referendums within each country.

Blast in Afghanistan kills 3 coalition soldiers KABUL, Afghanistan: A roadside bomb killed three soldiers from the U.S-led coalition in western Afghanistan, while 18 Taliban fighters died in clashes elsewhere in the country, officials said yesterday. The bomb that struck the U.S. coalition vehicle Wednesday also wounded another coalition member, the U.S. military said in a statement. In the southern Kandahar province, a bomb placed on a donkey hit a police vehicle patrolling west of the provincial capital, killing an officer and wounding two other people, said Officer Sadullah Khan.

WASHINGTON -- Assistant Secretary of State Ellen R. Sauerbrey, whose socially conservative views came in for scrutiny when President Bush picked her for the diplomatic post, is being criticized for her plan to speak at a conference in Poland for opponents of abortion and same-sex marriage. Nineteen members of the European Parliament have asked Sauerbrey to reconsider her scheduled appearance at the World Congress of Families next month in Warsaw. The members of the European Parliamentary Working Group on Separation of Religion and Politics say that several people scheduled to speak at the three-day conference have taken positions that clash with the European Charter of Fundamental Rights.

WARSAW, Poland -- A contentious report that accuses 14 European nations of being complicit in more than 1,200 CIA flights that were used to shuttle terrorist suspects to secret prisons around the world was adopted yesterday by the European Parliament. The vote in Strasbourg, France, was 382-256, with 74 abstentions. Parliamentarians who supported the resolution said the report exposed how European governments had turned a blind eye to human rights violations. Many of those who voted against it said the 76-page report was short on hard evidence and seemed to display an anti-American bias.

PARIS --The European Union's highest court ruled yesterday that the EU had overstepped its authority by agreeing to give the United States personal details about airline passengers on flights to America in an effort to fight terrorism. The decision will force the two sides to renegotiate the deal at a time of heightened concerns about possible infringements of civil liberties by the Bush administration in its campaign against terrorism, and the extent to which European governments have cooperated.

BERLIN - After a barrage of criticism, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi apologized yesterday for likening a German member of the European Parliament to a Nazi. In a call to German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, who earlier in the day had demanded an apology from Berlusconi, the Italian leader said he was sorry for the offense. But he added that he had been offended by the member of Parliament, Martin Schulz, who had criticized his conduct as prime minister. "During a telephone conversation with the German chancellor, the prime minister told him about the serious affront that he faced in the European Parliament yesterday," a statement from Berlusconi's office said.

PARIS - A French prosecutor has begun a preliminary investigation into whether the U.S. global surveillance system, which listens in on millions of telephone calls, faxes and electronic messages each day, is a threat to French well-being. The prosecutor, Jean-Pierre Dintilhac, has ordered France's counterintelligence agency, DST, to appraise the actions of the system, Echelon. The system links computers in at least seven sites around the world to receive, analyze and sort information captured from satellite communications.

MINSK, Belarus - Saying that Europe is poised between "hope and fear" over the future of democracy in Belarus, a delegation from the European Parliament severely criticized yesterday President Aleksandr Lukashenko's assault on his political opponents and threatened to withhold a team of observers for elections he is trying to orchestrate for the fall. The election struggle puts the country of 10 million between Russia and Poland at a crucial junction. Lukashenko is seeking to restore the legitimacy of his hard-line nationalist government after he disbanded a democratically elected parliament in 1996, installed his own rump parliament and extended his term to 2001 in a referendum that was widely condemned as rigged.

PARIS -- Does the right have a future? After being out of the White House for seven years, the Republican Party senses that it has a good chance to regain control of the executive branch. Thus, the phenomenal $36 million in campaign money raised already by Texas Gov. George W. Bush, the GOP's front-runner.The major European parties of the right have no such dream. Not only are they out, but also in Britain and France, they are down and demoralized. The German Christian Democrats are holding up in public opinion against the divided and frequently incoherent coalition government of Social Democrats and Greens of Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, but elections are distant.

PARIS -- The "third way," which serves to describe the programs of the Clinton administration and the Blair government in England, is not an ideology, but an explanation.Third way politicians say they're committed to the social and egalitarian goals of an older left, but are making necessary accommodations to a market capitalism that has proved a more efficient generator of wealth than did the planned economy dear to the old Left.The new German government of Gerhard Schroeder, having shed its original economics minister, Oskar Lafontaine, claims now to practice the third way, calming the spirits of German industrialists who, under Mr. Lafontaine, had threatened emigration, taking their industries' jobs with them.

THE mass resignation of the European Union's 20 commissioners, under a cloud of scandal, paralyzes the 15-nation economic giant. The solution of that crisis should strengthen the structure.The commissioners, whose terms expire at year's end, will stay on as caretakers. This sharpens current negotiations among member governments to revise the expensive farm program.It heightens public interest in the normally apathetic June election of the 626-member European Parliament, thought superfluous until now.The EU crisis may also, unfortunately, paralyze negotiations in a damaging trade war with the United States.